Monday Morning Music Ministry

11-4-24

As a historian, I sometimes am seduced by the “long view” of events in the life of our nation. Every people, every society, every civilization since the dawn of time has experienced crises. And so has the United States. Natural disasters, sure. Errors, national sins, corruption? We have not been immune. We have muddled through; and frequently we have triumphed.

There are many ways we are different than the myriad civilizations that have preceded us, societies that have risen and fallen. But there is one similarity we cannot escape. America will fall, as those civilizations have fallen. Whether it will be in hazy, distant future; whether it will be a revolution-evolution to a better system we cannot envision, or a slow disintegration from within or by invasions… the wheel of history grinds with determination.

Another path is whether we are in the midst, now, of the passing of the United States, the “extinction of freedom” about which Ronald Reagan warned.

In the days of Noah (Jesus said, recorded in Luke 17:27), they were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage, until the day when… the flood came and destroyed them all. In other words, we can be in a crisis and not realize it… or its severity.

Because we eat and drink and go to jobs and wake up every morning, we are tempted to think all is normal, that our problems will resolve themselves. However, America is at an unprecedented inflection-point.

• Every dispositive “metric” points to rot and decay – crime statistics; drug use; human trafficking; homelessness; child and spousal abuse; disparity of wealth and poverty.
• Worse, if possible, are the underlying problems that seem insoluble – the decline in religion and faith; the social acceptance of baby-killing; glorification of violence; widespread illiteracy; invasion of millions of the world’s “unknowns” across virtually non-existent borders; the casual disregard of marriage vows and the prevalence of divorce; sex as a commodity.
• Even more insidious are factors that are challenging to discern, manipulated by players difficult to identify – the Dark State increasingly monitors, and controls, our lives; Big Media, Big “Education,” Big Pharma dictate our priorities; our currency is worthless and the economy is a toy in the hands of a few; wars are instigated here and there, and we are like pawns on a giant chessboard whose players are bloodthirsty masters we scarcely know; we being lied to by “journalists,” hypnotized by media, propagandized by pundits.
• … and we are anesthetized by the onetime source of refuge and strength, the mainstream church.

Click: “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it any more!”

This time, this election, is different. The choices America makes and the implicit re-dedication that must follow, is consequential. The contest is not really between two individuals. Their unique strengths and weaknesses actually camouflage the larger historical trends are colliding. The election of 2024 is more than Republican vs Democrat; more than conservative vs liberal; more than old vs new.

How can we reverse course? Christian, do not pray that God send revival. It is lazy and irresponsible to pray for revival: that is our job, not God’s! It would not be genuine if we do not, ourselves, one by one, redeem our own lives, our households, our families, our relatives, our neighborhoods, our friends, our towns and cities… our nation. Then: our schools, our media, our churches too.

Some patriots are uncomfortable with Mr Trump as the leader of a moral, as well as a political, Restoration. His opponent Harris is a lightweight Jezebel who quickly will pass from the scene, but the former President, despite his record of accomplishing much for traditional values and Christian concerns, invites skepticism.

But the Bible is replete with flawed figured used by God for His purposes. In fact, Scripture overflows with stories and examples and lessons of people who are not always bright and shiny, yet through whom God has worked His will. And we can add you and me – are we so impure that we cannot let Him use us too? God forbid!

I believe that God can use, and is using, President Trump in many and mighty ways that might help bring this nation back to its standing as a home for the righteous. As we join the fight(s), and before “standing”… we must kneel. And vote. “In God We Trust” – do you believe it? Well, God trusts us, too!

There is an old Irish fable in which a man arrives at Heaven’s Gate and is challenged by St Peter to display the scars he acquired during his life on earth. “I have no scars,” the man says. St Peter replies: “Really? There was nothing you ever thought was worth fighting for?”

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Click: Ray Charles – America The Beautiful (Live in D.C.)

10-21-24

A message tuned to the baseball playoffs and the imminent World Series. And, a personal note about how God views the sport of baseball. I am persuaded that He anoints the National Pastime in a special way. You ask, What makes me think that? How about the very first words in the Bible itself?

“In the Big Inning…”

OK, Strike One… or an error? Play ball:

Athletes are not on pedestals – it would be hard to pitch a slider or shag fly balls if they were – yet often are perceived as role models. The problems and sins and suspensions or penalties make the news, but a high percentage of baseball players are committed Christians. Every team has a branch of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and after games (although TV cameras turn away) players can be seen uniting in prayer… not the least impressive when you see that they are from opposing teams.

Some teams – once again seldom even acknowledged on secular TV and radio – have regularly scheduled “Faith Nights,” with special promotions for church groups and dedicated post-game performances.

A recent development at baseball games is the favorite music of a player heard via loudspeakers as a batter approaches the plate. Players can choose their “theme music,” and many players have chosen Christian songs, to inspire them and to witness to fans in the stands. Brandon Nimmo of the New York Mets is one such player.

Many fans know that Billy Sunday played professional baseball for eight years before becoming one of America’s most prominent, and effective evangelists.

Among baseball players of the recent past and currently on teams, who have been open about their love of Jesus Christ are Todd Zeile, Steven Matz, Daniel Murphy, Andrew McCutchen, Anthony Rendon, Chase Headley, Mariano Rivera, Corey Dickerson, Aaron Nola, Matt Holliday, J T Realmuto, Rajai Davis, Albert Pujols, Clayton Kershaw, R A Dickey, Brian Dozier, Dansby Swanson, Curt Schilling, Pedro Martinez, Freddie Freeman, Paul Goldschmidt, James McCann, John Smoltz, Aaron Judge, J D Martinez, Nolan Arenado, Ronald Acuña Jr., Jose Altune, Gunnar Henderson, Francisco Alvarez, Francisco Lindor, and the recent minor-leaguer (former football star) Tim Tebow. Managers like Dusty Baker and Dave Roberts specifically praise God for the success they have enjoyed. This is only a partial list, praise God.

The New York Mets’ utility phenom Jose Iglesias is also a songwriter and singer whose stage name is “Candelita.” He recorded a song that shot, this season, the Number One in the Spanish pop charts… and has become theme song of his team’s remarkable successes this year, played not only when he strides to the plate, but after every player’s home run and the team’s victories: OMG. It stands for “Oh My God” and opens with these lines, “OMG, throw all the bad things away from here! OMG, give me health and prosperity.”

Skeptics and cynics often ridicule players who thank God or give Jesus the glory after a win. It is notable, even when overlooked (once again, TV cameras focused elsewhere), that many players thank God too for their health, integrity on the field, and fans’ enjoyment… for we are to thank Him for all things, in all things.

Winning or losing? Very important.

“How you play the game”? More important.

Praising God in all things? Most important!

Play Ball!!!

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A song about baseball, memories, dads, competition, integrity, fathers, and our Father. By a friend-of-a-friend, Bob Bennett.

Click: A Song About Baseball

10-7-24

Whether it is the logic of the issue’s presentation, or the frequent statements by Pro-Choice people, I have changed my attitude, and my stance, on the matter of Abortion. Count me as favoring the procedure.

This might surprise people who have known me, and are familiar with my views, but henceforth I will advocate against the so-called “Pro-Life” positions. In deference to people who have joined these contentious debates with me, as well as readers who might be interested in arguments that have changed – for they have, in society, for many people in many ways – I will present my reasons.

They are not new with me, for the Abortion debate has been engaged uncountable times. But I will summarize the salient points of my new home, Pro-Choice.

• In a democracy, the majority rules. And these days Abortion is accepted by many people; it is urged upon everybody; and is no longer a taboo procedure to be ashamed of. It seems like “Pro-Life” is in the minority.

• Besides the change in public “morals,” there are the advances in birth control. Abortion has been made easy, cheap, and widely available. And now, technology has brought us pills and liquids and various abortifacients that will do the job just as well as surgery.

• Since birth control is no longer a matter of opprobrium in society, Abortion ought be regarded as another, maybe after-the-fact, form of birth control. Over and done.

• In that view, we know from the scientific community that the earth is over-populated, and resources are being stretched thin. Going forward as a species, we need fewer, not more, people.

• There are many couples, married and unmarried, who simply are not ready to start a family. If we are free to express mutual love, we ought to be free of the burdens of parenthood. If you hated your parents, don’t become one yourself. Stop that life.

• In practical terms, again speaking of over-crowding, limited resources, and the convenience of family situations, we must frankly embrace the woman who inspired the contemporary Abortion and Family Planning “Enlightenment,” Margaret Sanger. She taught us that the lower rungs of society – especially the poor, the chronically unhealthy, and inferior groups like African-Americans in her view – ought to be thinned out.

• Not excluding teen pregnancies and “extra-marital” affairs, the majority of Abortions, and a higher percentage of Abortion clinics, are in neighborhoods of the poor, underprivileged, and African-Americans, already. This is a start, and should be encouraged.

• “Freedom” is an attractive, compelling word. It has persuaded me, and many others, in the context of the Abortion debate. Except for matters like murder and “hate speech,” the government should not adopt restrictive laws and regulations. Legalize Abortion, drugs, “mercy killings”; and then begin to restrict outworn traditional practices.

• Speaking of “hate speech,” all the familiar views and traditions of many cultures and peoples – views from Aborting babies to personal religious expression – ought to be banned too. Some enlightened countries imprison people who maintain cherished customs and practices, and we can look forward to doing so here, too.

On second thought…

Of course these are not my views. But separately or together, they are the views of many people in the United States. And only a few of those concepts are old, “outdated.” For instance, Margaret Sanger warred against “Negroes” who, she believed, had too many children. Today her followers might sound compassionate but still embrace the idea of thinning the “under-served.”

The American culture of consumerism, our throw-away mentality, and the ethos of Life Is Cheap, seduce many people to subscribe to the ideas I listed. “Everybody does it”; “Mind your own damn business”; and “Who does it harm?” have supplanted the 10 Commandments.

“Who does it harm?” is, of course, a dishonest question that many people are happy to ignore. Of course, Abortion harms the unborn baby. Pretty severely. It is easy to ignore the silent screams, isn’t it?

As to the points above:

… Democracy does not determine right and wrong. Too often it is a weapon to mask the evil that men do. God does not depend on our opinions of His Commandments.

… As to easy forms of birth control (hmmm, why is it not called “fetus control” or “blob control”?): Even if government imposed legality, why must the public pay for others’ Abortions-on-Demand? Why force doctors and nurses with consciences to participate in killing babies?

… Over-population can be addressed by resource-management. If a woman “gets in trouble” (what a bizarre phrase) perhaps kids can learn to stop screwing; perhaps parents, and schools, and oh yeah, the church, can remember how to wisely counsel decent behavior.

… The not-so-veiled racism of Sanger’s spawn merely proves the French saying that “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”

… In the end, we realize that Freedom is fungible, at least as we employ it. Freedom to kill babies is literally selective, partial-freedom at best. The Aborted baby is given no “Choice.”

How often do people think these things through? If a woman kills her baby, and the father objects, is it “fair” that he has no say in the matter… especially as the Law says he is obligated for Child Support otherwise. If a baby was aborted, do the parents wonder, years afterward, where and what their child would be like, be doing? A vast majority of babies with birth “defects” are Aborted these days… but have you seen a mother’s life that has been transformed, loving for that child she bore?

We have become a Culture of Death, no better than those “primitive” societies we read about in faraway places and ancient times, that practiced infant sacrifice. Today we sacrifice our children to the gods of convenience and pleasure. Science breaks its back searching for the Origin of Life… discovering new life-forms… and desperate to find evidence of Life in the universe. But science – and so many of us – have become callous to the practice of killing babies, snuffing out Life.

No matter the circumstances, God’s Word tells us that every child was known and “formed” by Him in the womb. His ways are mysterious to us, sometimes, but He is sovereign. Did Jesus come to earth to save souls, yet we destroy them first? That is the devil’s job, and joy. And our curse.

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By the way, if you are a reader, or have had this message passed to you, and are somewhere near my pretend-position here – and if you have been wracked with confusion or guilt or regrets – you must remember that even Abortion is something that God forgives. Repentance and cries for forgiveness “God will not despise.” He is the Lord and Giver of Life (yes, a reason we must not play God) and He yearns for fellowship with you… and helping minister to your problems.

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Click: I Hear Your Voice

9-23-24

Readers of these essays know that one of my favorite poems is “A Psalm of Life” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Its subtitle is “What the Heart of the Young Man Said to the Psalmist.” It is a short poem whose first quatrains are:

Tell me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow Find us farther than to-day.

“Life is real! Life is earnest!” – those lines ought to be written over every newborn’s crib; on every grade-school’s wall; ought to be recited at graduations, weddings, and, yes, even funerals. The sentiment has special urgency for contemporary America, where avoidance of reality, commitment, and earnest work is the mode.

When I was a boy, “labor-saving device” was a catchword in advertisements for appliances. Yes, families desired to escape the drudgery of winding, polishing, cleaning, prepping, cutting, mowing, whatever. Then… such imperatives became necessities themselves… and then obsessions. The next step was “planned obsolescence” – “Why fix something, when you can just buy a new one?” which seduced us all to become wastrels, unskilled, and lazy.

Related: this leisure-obsessed society was fed sugar waters and fatty snacks until obesity became epidemic. A “Life is real! Life is earnest” culture would take note of the situation, and stop poisoning itself. But America chooses to spend billions of dollars on diet pills, exercise machines, surgery, health clubs, and psychiatrists instead of simply stopping to gobble junk.

Related: how addicted are we? Try to imagine a world without TV remotes. Big deal, you say? How many complaints would rise up in every household if we had to get out of our chairs, walk across the room, to change channels or adjust the volume all evening? (Well, at least it would provide some exercise…)

Edwin Markham, another poet, wrote other favorite lines of mine:

For all your days prepare,

And meet them ever alike:

When you are the anvil, bear –

When you are the hammer, strike.

Both poems address fundamental challenges we face, or should, in the human family. Snack foods and TV remotes seem trivial, but they are symptoms of basic requirements, or not, of people who navigate life. There is an order to life; a structure that we recognize, even subliminally, that leads to stability, that leads to happiness.

If there is one theme – and there are several – that is woven through the Bible, it is the foundational aspect of the family… the idea that God ordained the Family… the roles, with rules and injunctions, for fathers, mothers, and children, husbands and wives. We are called “children” of God. We are invited to the Marriage Feast of the Lamb in End Times. The Church in many places is likened to the Bride of Christ. These references, and many in between, fill the Scriptures from Genesis to Revelation.

This is not a message about cohabitation or the prevalence of divorce but, if I may, a lament for what happens, and doesn’t, in American families today while they are together.

At one time in America, we know from accounts and descriptions, members of a family, perhaps in a buggy or a streetcar, would be seen all reading their Bibles. Today? How often do you see every member of a family, maybe waiting for their dinners at a restaurant, all bent over, intent on their cell phones? It is not so much the individual reading that I notice, but what they read, and don’t. Many churches have full programs of kids’ church and Women’s Bible Study and Men’s Groups… but few have Family Studies. Oh, “that’s what church is for”? No… church is for worship, not fellowship and discussion. How many families dedicate time for fellowship and discussion?

These bees in my bonnet were buzzing this week because a dear friend whose daughter had an aneurysm many years ago and has lingered, bedridden, for decades; and the daughter died this week. I think of the prayers and networks of support… and how precious families are.

I think of my own sister, who gave birth to a cerebral palsy girl predicted to live a couple years but lived into her mid-20s. My sister led a somewhat aimless life until her daughter’s condition gave her life purpose. I think – I know – that God does not send disease, but He blesses those who call on Him to meet life’s challenges.

I think of a friend whose wife and children constituted a family unit that could have been painted by Norman Rockwell. But in “Twilight Years” he is widowed and one child has not spoken to him in years over some perceived slight; another lives overseas and seldom speaks to him – and he has four grandchildren who he might not recognize if they passed on the street – and another who sustained a life-threatening situation but did not call his father for three weeks, “not wanting to bother him.”

My friend seriously wonders whether that “nuclear” family is in fact happier, or closer, than families riven by divorce or infidelity. Has he been a failure as a father? (May I ask that you pray for the people I have mentioned here?)

Finally… Related. Yes, related. At this time of year, with kids going off to schools or careers, I sometimes remember the (secular) song “Letting Go.” Not as gloomy as the situations I have just described, it is a sweet song about a daughter going off to college. Parents can shed tears in those moments. But… there are cycles in life. Priorities change. Perspectives adjust. Time heals. I have said, with children, “Days drag on, but the years whiz by.” Don’t stand there and watch.

I pray that you don’t have to say “Good-bye” too often. But Letting Go, as hard as it is, comes to all of us, and also can be sweet. Choose those moments, those reactions.

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Click: Letting Go

9-16-24

Daylight Savings Time is about to end, and I never have been able to figure out whether to be grateful or regretful – you know, “gaining” or losing an hour of sleep. Just go to sleep, like my mother used to say. It’s like the “glass half-empty vs half-full” discussions. Just drink it, or re-fill it, and be quiet. Well, there are many things I don’t understand.

I do know that Autumn, that imminent change of season, traditionally has been regarded in poetry and art as the gloomiest of the four seasons. It seems odd, but among the testimonies of not regarding cold, dead Winter as gloomy (a host of happy outdoor activities and holidays have already sprung to your mind) is the long narrative poem by John Greenleaf Whittier, Snowbound. A 19th-century family is stuck in the house after a tremendous blizzard, and possible feelings of dread or fear are replaced by bonding, reminiscences, humor. Outside, all is frozen and every living thing looks dead, but warmth and life glow in the family circle. Winter = not so bad.

Autumn is the only season, at least in the English language, that has more than one name. Among its traditional names was Harvest – before urban living made that concept somewhat abstract. Then there is the familiar Fall whose origin philologists have not been able to trace, but there is the obvious association with “fallen leaves.”

As I say, and despite the warm associations we might have with colorful leaves and familiar smells in the air, in literature and art Fall is often the basis of melancholia. Some psychologists say that Fall outpaces Winter as the season of peoples’ dark depression. Perhaps, after sunny and bright summertime, the palpable signs of death surround us. Dying and falling leaves. Bare trees. Wilted flower-beds. Field animals looking for shelter. Earlier dusk and darkness descends. Colder air drives us indoors.

The adagio from Antonio Vivaldi’s “Autumn” in his iconic concerti grossi The Four Seasons is beautiful – but covers us in a sad, melancholy cloak.

If we might feel overshadowed by vague signs of dying and death, however, don’t blame it all on nature. In a larger sense, humankind – the post-Christian West especially – is at a point where we choose Death at almost every opportunity. In many way we live in a Culture of Death.

Yes, there have always been wars and rumors of wars… but today they are deadlier than ever, a fact that encourages rather than deters the war parties running governments. A Culture of Death.

We have developed new scientific means to extend life and confront diseases… but today, Science also aggressively pursues ways to end lives. A vast majority of birth “defects” are “terminated” – that is to say, babies are killed. A majority of unwed mothers arrange for their babies to be killed – something that politicians call “health care.” A Culture of Death.

The various surgical and “psychological” imperatives toward lower birth rates, “transgender” advocacy, homosexual relationships, genital mutilation – even denying parental notifications and obligating taxpayers to support – resist procreation and the furtherance of life. A Culture of Death.

The most obvious contemporary versions of human sacrifice and infanticide – the American spin on practices we condemn in ancient societies and pagan tribes – are “mercy killings” and, of course, abortion. Now I myself once was quite inured to the concept and practice; I viewed abortion as a calendar-skewed version of birth control. I now feel like I have blood on my hands. So you can jump on my “conversion,” but don’t jump ugly; many of us have seen the light. Along my personal Road to Damascus, I scored one of the rare interviews with the lady who was “Roe” of Roe vs Wade… and who became bitterly regretful about her role. Beyond that, I cannot understand those who endlessly bemoan the accounts Jews deemed “inconvenient” by Nazis, yet are quite comfortable with 63.5-million “inconvenient” babies killed since Roe. A Culture of Death.

And people feel depressed by Signs of Death that accompany the return of Autumn? What an insult, if I may say, to Mother Nature and (properly) Father God. Maybe that “glass half-empty or half-full” metaphor has resonance after all. Maybe Harvest-Autumn-Fall is entirely different than many people are wont to perceive.

Rejoice! Leaves die, but before they happily flutter among us, they clothe themselves with brilliant reds and yellows and orange colors that painters can hardly capture. The aromas of Autumn are unique, almost romantic. (I hope your neighborhoods still allow the burning of raked leaves.) Yes… harvests! Vegetables and fruits that were nurtured through the Summer can now be enjoyed – different colors and flavors associated only with Fall. Crisp air? Invigorating; time to huddle and cuddle; and to experience a new aspect of nature… not a dying one.

And if trees go bare, and crops are harvested, and things superficially look bleak… we cannot forget that many things go dormant, but do not die. Seeds will sprout, even through cracks in cement. Flowers will bloom in deserts and other unexpected places. Woodland animals are born, blink, and open their eyes.

Landscapes are resplendent with color. “Dead” wildflowers and Indian corn grace our homes. Seashells and periwinkles, so unique and colorful, are, after all, virtual external skeletons and husks of dead life; but beautiful. The sun, they tell us, is dying… but it gives life and warmth. My go-to source of wise comments (after the Bible), many of you know, is Theodore Roosevelt. On these subjects he once wrote, “Both life and death are part of the Great Adventure,” and it surely is so.

Finally let us remember, always remember, the One who tasted death… yet overcame it. Jesus died, so that our souls escape eternity in hell where there is no life. We, like our Savior, can overcome sin, death, and the grave, and know eternal life.

A Culture of Life!
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Click: I’ll Have A New Life

8-12-24

We all have a way of anesthetizing ourselves about things in life – and not only the unpleasant matters. We “go through hell” after this or that experience; and we describe a “little taste of Heaven” when something sweet happens.

In truth, whether you think a bit, or read Scripture, we have no conception of how horrible hell will be, or how rapturous Heaven will be. Why do we humans want to avoid warnings and lessons, and under-appreciate the rewards and blessings that we will meet.

Ah, skeptics may say: it is all metaphoric anyway. We don’t believe, deep down, that there is a Heaven or a hell, they say.

Good luck playing those odds. You will find out; or maybe you won’t. But those kinds of bets – about your life; your soul; your place in eternity – are awful tools with which to navigate your existence. The choices you make. The effects you have on others. The joy you may experience; or not.

There is a God, of course. He did not create robots but children with free will, and with that freedom we choose to defy Him, resist Him often, and sin against His ways. He still loved us (while we rebelled, in fact) and offered His earthly Incarnation, Jesus, to be a sacrifice for sin on our behalf. And if we still rebel, He allows us to believe in that “sin offering,” Jesus, who He overcame death as we can do, in order to be reconciled and deserve a place in that Heaven we mentioned above. Even more, He provides His Holy Spirit to work in our lives to enlighten our way and strengthen our faith.

The simple Gospel. What about that deal, how about those odds?

Yet many people reject God and such a salvation (in spite of the alternative, the “hell” that people risk). There are uncountable ways to reject God… or a million excuses. And there are uncountable options people cling too, ridiculously desperate to find the alternative to Jesus Christ. False gods; dashed hopes; pagan rites; bizarre rituals; broken promises; disproved theories; silly philosophies. And – of course – many plausible philosophies and logical-sounding “faiths.” And let’s not forget the many people who actually admit that their lives’ standards are likely baseless but “they work for them.” They’ll wake up dead some day, having deluded themselves and maybe kept from being awful neighbors… but left the world no better. And, tragically, wasted their lives.

Using words like “uncountable” ways and “millions” of excuses, I want to remind us that on the “God side” of such discussions there are not myriad ways to Heaven. Salvation is not a multiple-choice quiz. All of God’s great workings with humanity points to one Messiah. His revealed Word asserts that Jesus is the only way to eternal life. Jesus claimed it Himself.

There are no loopholes.

People might seek in vain – they do; they have – and, well, we get back to Playing the Odds. How tragic. History is replete with people who think they have discovered a better way; who think, frankly, that they are smarter then God. Lots of folks are smarter than I am, but show me someone who is smarter than God.

Is it arrogant for people like me to believe such things, and to plead with others to believe them? Naw, I just peek at the cheat sheets – the Bible; the testimony of saints (that is, average people who have met the Savior); the accounts of miracles; the smiles of babies; the eyes of the healed; the changed lives. My own changed life.

Those are ways God “proves” Himself. To skeptics reading this – or Christians who might need fresh encouragement – don’t believe me. That is the point! Don’t believe me, or other mortals or traditions or philosophies or those who sell beads and amulets or show lists of junior-gods and counterfeit doctrines. Put your faith in “sure things”?

Believe Jesus, not any of them unless they embody, point to, reflect, and embrace Jesus against any other version of “truth.”

Whether people have debated about (or with) Jesus… or avoided Him all their lives… or ignore Him at every turn… it is futile to say that you have not “met” Him. He is, in fact, closer to you than a shadow. He is with you, whether you want Him there or not, because He wants to be with you.

The comedian Orson Bean abandoned secularism and atheism, he said, when he realized that the “hole in our hearts” we all feel, deep down, can only be filled by Jesus. That’s how God made us. And why He sent His Son.

Every person on earth already has a relationship with Jesus. It is just everyone’s choice whether it is an empty, frustrated relationship, or a beautiful, fulfilling, joyful friendship with Him.

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Click: Blessed Assurance

8-26-24

I invite you today to swim with me in a Stream of Consciousness. Or float downstream. Maybe to swim a little bit against the current… but it is a gentle current. Choose the analogy. Random thoughts, but in the same stream, so to speak.

I have visions of a gentle mountain stream, not of riding on roaring waves or fighting strong billows or tacking through surface winds. Rough seas are exciting, even when dangerous. These are busy times… and loud, and fast, and demanding. But calm waters have a place in our lives too, even metaphorically. So I have been longing lately for quiet times. Respite. Even solitude.

Some Christians are suspicious of “meditation,” but that is because it sometimes has been hijacked by secular and pagan folks. The Bible, however, tells us to mediate on God’s word. Contemplate. Reflect. Do we do that, often enough, in the year of our Lord 2024?

Let us remember the Scriptural injunction, “Be still and know that I am God.” Whew! What power and wisdom in that quiet command. Softly and tenderly Jesus calls to us. To be still… before anything else.

One of the most profound experiences of my life was spent at an abbey in California. I signed up for a week of silence – no lessons or leading or programs; just a room in a rural monastery with monks. No phones, no electricity, no talking allowed except for one common meal of the day… when, actually, very few brothers or visitors spoke anyway beyond prayers and a brief homily. Overnight there was a library lit by candles if one chose not to sleep. On the spacious grounds there were pathways, benches, and Stations of the Cross.

I thought by the end of the week, between my Bible, notebook, and myself, I would have new insights about God. I did not, really. However I felt incredibly closer to Him. I cannot explain that, other than receiving blessings from Being Still… and knowing He is God. Softly and tenderly He called to me.

At the other end of the spectrum, perhaps, I recall a friend, the heir to a giant industrial fortune, who adopted a Discipline of Silence, wherewith he chose to not speak a peep for one day a week despite conducting his routine activities. It was not a spiritual (that is, Biblical or Christian) exercise but something closer to, in fact, an aspect of a character in one episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. I am not sure of its efficacy, but the last I heard of him, he made the news for twice taking a pick-axe to Donald Trump’s stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Strange. I suppose he did not speak in his own defense in court either, but otherwise I saw no blessings or insights from wearing his virtual Cone of Silence.

Back to the other extreme. Also in a Catholic setting, I was invited once to an ancient priory (nunnery) in rural France. In the evening service lit by candles, the sisters and novitiates chanted for a full four hours. Whether in Latin or French or ancient French I do not remember, or could not distinguish: I was a visitor, not a participant. It was equivalent, therefore, to a form of enforced silence, accompanied by quiet a capella chants, as I was alone with my thoughts.

I also cannot explain it, but the soft and tender musical solitude had me thinking, and meditating, and contemplating, and praying, and reflecting. I found myself smiling and crying, sobbing and refreshed, convicted and liberated, guilty and free. All in all, closer to God that evening than I could have planned or imagined. Softly and tenderly He called to me.

Back in the 1800s Henry Adams wrote about visiting a world’s fair where a main attraction was something called The Dynamo. This was at the dawn of what we now call the Industrial Age, and the Dynamo dominated an exhibition hall; several stories high, it was a busy conglomeration of valves and pistons. It shook and made noise and… did nothing, produced nothing. It was a form of industrial performance-art, meant to represent the coming Machine Age.

And so it did. Adams went further, in his mind, seeing it as a modern version of the cathedral: a symbol of society’s hope and faith and trust and devotion. And so it proved to be. It was also something he could not anticipate. It was huge; noisy; overwhelming – just as our life, today, has manifested those characteristics, totally eclipsing our privacy. Our own space. Our solitude. The nearly extinct qualities of contemporary life!

“Be still.” How hard has that become? When sometimes we might feel the need of the Holy Spirit to shout at us – to remind us of God’s Truth, Jesus’s love – the Word gets through to us best when it comes, instead, softly and tenderly. Father knows best.

Be creative; be intentional. Find a quiet time… get to a quiet space… savor a quiet moment. And be still, knowing of great things, softly and tenderly.

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Click: Softly & Tenderly

7-29-24

Many of you know the Gospel songs “The Sweetest Gift, A Mother’s Smile” and “Where Could I Go But To the Lord” and “Winging My Way Back Home.” I know them as precious songs in some hymnals, also as Gospel, folk, and country classics that recording artists have sung for a generation or two. They have touched millions, as have hundreds of other compositions by their composer J B Coats.

In turn, I know J B Coats’s grandson as a friend, an Ole Miss graduate who loves the Lord and loves comics (two of my loves, too!). I am not going to link to J B Coats song this week, but some week I will focus on his music ministry. In the meantime: Daryl Coats the grandson recently shared something that could sound like a mere Internet meme… but got me to thinking deeper. He wrote –

When you hear someone say, “the last thing I wanna do is hurt you” – it suggests there’s a list, and that hurting you is on that list.

Right? That is not the same as saying, “I never want to hurt you,” or “I can’t imagine ever hurting you.” Is it a subtle difference… or big difference? The “last thing”? The person seems to be saying, “I do want to hurt you, but it’s not my main priority.”

Here is what it reminded me of: Paul wrote in II Timothy 1:7 –

God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

In the same way as Daryl parsed the words, I think St Paul meant: There IS a spirit of fear… but, remember, it does come from God. That is the similarity I see. Some Christians, “eternal optimists,” are tempted to claim that fear is something that does not exist, or have to exist. (Like the intention to hurt someone, or not). Christian-Lite celebrities like Norman Vincent Peale and Joel Osteen preach that fear is a false emotion, casually to be wished away.

Well, fear is real.

Safety comes from recognizing and respecting fear. Not yielding, but dealing. Note that the Bible does not say “There is no such thing as fear.” It says rather clearly, that there is a spirit of fear; sure enough.

… we see truth, and take heart, and overcome fear by realizing that there is a spirit of fear in this world, this life; but that God is not its author. We can fear certain things in life – let us start a list, as suggested by Daryl’s aphorism. As a nation we can fear pandemics; foreign wars; economic disruption; political corruption; assassinations; crime; personal tragedies… We can fear such things. Or we can anticipate them. Or we can work against them. Or we can plan.

We can see similarities, as I suggested above, or we can see great differences indeed when we confront “fear” – by any of its manifestations and nuances.

So we can “translate” Paul – it is called exegesis, or apologetics – and make our list:
1. There is such a thing as Fear
2. There is a Spirit of Fear that can affect people
3. God is not the author of that Spirit of Fear
4. The author, then, is the devil, or people who hate us, or we ourselves
5. We do not have to yield to that Spirit of Fear.

There is another Spirit, and that is the Spirit of God. The Holy Ghost was sent to encourage us, comfort us, and strengthen us.

And speaking of power, and love, and a sound mind (weren’t we?), do you realize that Jesus Christ said “Fear Not” almost as often as He said “Hello”? In fact, the Bible counts 365 times the phrase “fear not” appears. If you want to see it this way – once for every day of the year!

Where do you keep your lists? On the fridge? On your computer screen’s frame? On Post-It notes? Keep this list in your hearts and minds.

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Click: No Depression in Heaven

7- 22 -24

I have received many responses to last week’s blog essay that addressed the old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. I have always been sensitive about the proposition because I can make quick sketches, but (as regular readers here know too well) I tend to be prolix. Talkative-by-keypad. (My excuse is that I seldom have the time to write shorter…)

The blog inspired many readers to declare themselves in the camp of either representational art (paintings and sculpture) or writing (prose and poetry) as the higher mode of expression.

It is an open question – ultimately a question that is neither silly nor intractable, but, rather, impossible definitively to answer. It clearly is subjective, but it stimulates worthwhile thoughts. Which “speaks” to you more, pictures or words? Art or story? Visuals or concepts? Which mode leads to fulfillment as a creator or an appreciator?

…all those reflections and discussions are collateral to composers, performers, or lovers of music joining the debate!

I have a friend in Ireland whom technically – no, literally – I have not yet met; but we have many mutual friends including my daughter Emily, and through his paintings I feel I know better than I do many lifelong friends. Fergus Ryan is an artist who works in some ancient traditions, both in media and themes. His images are ultra-realistic, and so are his subjects… until they both frequently invoke golden moods and motifs, whether in subjects’ eyes – which seldom meet the viewers’ – or what is seen through the mists over seas and fields.

Fergus’s work has been compared, favorably, with that of Andrew Wyeth. Many of his subjects could be relatives of Helga; and many of his landscapes could be those of Winslow Homer or (to me) scenes reminiscent of Edward Hopper. His media are egg tempera (ancient of days) and oil; and his surfaces include silk besides traditional canvas.

Fergus is a Christian whose beliefs do not directly inspire individual works but in a much larger sense inform his work, his love of the natural world and its inhabitants: human and otherwise. Embracing this larger appreciation of God’s world led him recently to share an affinity with another great artist, Michelangelo:

“Neither painting nor sculpture will be able any longer to calm my soul, now turned toward that Divine Love that opened His arms on the cross to take us in” (from The Voyage of My Life, 1555).

This was the man (I mean Michelangelo Buonarroti, not Fergus Ryan), a contemporary of Leonardo and Raphael, who sculpted the Pieta when barely into his twenties; later David and Moses; and painted the Sistine Chapel; who made holy figures and holy things relatable to humanity… who yet declared sublimation to the overwhelming message of the Cross. The “agony and the ecstasy”? To Michelangelo the simple and profound were one: the power and the glory.

To my theme here, however, about words, art, creativity: when Fergus shared the quotation by Michelangelo, a self-important skeptic – I should say an aggressive denier of God and anything faintly Biblical or religious – peppered him with allegations of Biblical forgeries and historical hoaxes. No proof, just ad hoc claims that only the stupidcould be seduced by “obvious nonsense.” Fergus, God (or Whoever) bless him, patiently debated the delusional correspondent online.

The Bible talks about “itching ears” – people who seek out the arguments they need to feed their prejudices. To quickly, and seriously, switch to the principal crisis in the lives of such people: Scripture lists many sins, and the Lord holds out mercy and forgiveness for them all… except one: Blaspheming the Holy Spirit. Willfully ignoring the Truth; ascribing God’s miracles to luck or (worse) one’s self; beholding the things of God but denying the Power thereof… these are things, to me, that might be called blaspheming the Holy Spirit.

Finally, to visit one bit of ignorance that was thrown at Fergus is one that skeptics, atheists, blasphemers often bray: that the creative genius of a Michelangelo, or the music of a Bach, or the kindness of a mother’s smile… have nothing to do with the Divine Spark. Individuals create, compose, and love on their own, these people say: a God has nothing to do with it.

I don’t know whether to have contempt or pity for people who harbor such bankruptcies of emotion. Knowing that God is in the midst of tender creativity is so much more profound than any notion of human origination! Don’t you agree?

Well. If you do – or if not – I will get off my soapbox and return to living-room discussions and debates. I ask (as my title says) a Question with No Right Answer. But it is fun, and worthwhile, to think about. It is, perhaps, about the nub of Creativity, and what is special to humankind when we create and perceive.

Let us say that you adore the Pieta of Michelangelo; or have been moved by the Magnificat by Bach; or have been reduced to tears by “How Do I Love Thee” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Which choice would make them more special to you? – if you could only have experienced them once in your life… and then you retained their memories; embraced the special ways they touched you; and you sought to recapture the meanings and emotions forever after?

Or… to see, hear, and read them over and over? Whenever you wanted? To dial-up the moods; to feed impulses; to memorize every one of their details? Would “familiarity breed contempt”?

No right or wrong answers? In either case, cherish the expressions of creativity… in others, and in yourself. May I suggest that God graces all His children with creative talents. But it is no less a Gift of God to have the taste, curiosity, and sensitivity to hold such things dear. That may be the answer: to let Him work through us and in us. Outward and inward.

Catch the Divine Spark.

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Click: All Things Bright And Beautiful

7-15-24

My old and dear friend Mark Dittmar shares wonderful, brief but profound spiritual thoughts every day through e-mail blasts he calls “Nuggets.”

Recently one of his messages spoke to me more than usual, and on several levels. His title was a question – “How Much Is a Picture Worth?” and the old saying was turned around:

An artist and a writer were arguing about whose work was more significant. “Well,” said the artist smugly, “one picture is worth a thousand words.”

“Hey, that’s good. Who wrote that?” countered the writer.

As someone who is a writer and an artist (come to think of it, so is Mark) I appreciated the points of view. Throughout most of human history, works of art and narratives were inextricably related. The creative expressions had virtually common functions. From cave paintings through scrolls and tapestries, paintings and stained-glass windows, pictures told stories. In the same fashion, as writing became codified, alphabets and books revealed themselves through more than letters and words: illuminated manuscripts; decorative scrolls; fabulous works like The Book of Kells.

Words and pictures – narratives and images – underwent a Great Divorce with the invention of the printing press. Almost overnight, words were“liberated.” Books comprised of only printed type were the norm; and artists were seduced, in a manner of speaking, to be “non-representational,” no longer obliged to tell stories or depict scenes with narrative import.

But at the turn of the 20^th century there was reconciliation of sorts. Stories and graphics, aided by technology and ingenuity and commercialism, discovered each other again in movies, comics, animation, and other plastic arts and expressions.

Again, it could be stated, or argued: “A picture is worth a thousand words.” I think it is creative delight that the proposition is an insoluble mystery. But one manifestation I have not yet mentioned is the age-old literary form of the fable… myths… epic poems and sagas… what storytellers and troubadours have done. That is, melding different artistic forms of expression.

Jesus called them “parables.”

Post-modernists think they have invented the “Power of Story,” but they merely have rediscovered, or try to, the mode of “painting word pictures.” He did not say anything to them without using a parable (Mark 4:34). Jesus, maybe more than Aesop or Confucius, dealt in word-pictures.

Mark – my friend, not the ancient Apostle – made reference to a painting that is making the rounds of the Internet. It illustrates a familiar parable, a well-known story: Jesus’s description of the Lost Sheep.

If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray (Matthew 8:12,13).

The parable presents a picture partly because it poses a moral dilemma; at least a “practical” challenge. Would you jeopardize the whole flock to search for one sheep? Would the owner of the flock approve? Did the lost sheep deserve its fate by straying from the flock? These are legitimate questions.

… unless you are that lost sheep.

The Savior of our souls is willing – He was willing; we have the record of it – to sacrifice all, even His own life, so the lost sheep might be saved. The point of the parable, in fact the point of view of God’s plan of salvation, is that He cares for us. He seeks us out. I believe that if the entirety of the human race had been sinless except for one person – let’s say you – Jesus would still have gone to the cross.

Speaking of the cross, we know that Jesus was beaten and whipped and nailed to that cross. But, in truth (imagine this as a picture) He virtually climbed and scrambled up the cross, and invited those spikes… so willing was He to die for you and me, taking our punishment upon Himself.

In the same way, the painting that’s going around the Internet really brought tears to my eyes. It depicts the sheep not merely lost but stuck in mud and muck, struggling. And it depicts the Good Shepherd. He is not viewing the distressed sheep from afar, or calling its name, or tip-toeing in its direction.

No, the Good Shepherd is running, trudging, muddy Himself, desperate to save the Lost Sheep. Picture the scene.

One more artistic expression to add to the miracle of creativity. This parable, this word-picture, this painting, has a holy counterpart in many hymns and Gospel songs. We have “sermons in song,” just as pictures can tell stories. One that moves me the most is “The Ninety and Nine.”

“Lord, Thou hast here Thy ninety and nine; Are they not enough for Thee?” But the Shepherd made answer: “This of Mine Has wandered away from Me. And although the road be rough and steep, I go to the desert to find My sheep.”

And all through the mountains, thunder-riv’n, And up from the rocky steep, There arose a glad cry to the gate of Heav’n, “Rejoice! I have found My sheep!” And the angels echoed around the throne, “Rejoice, for the Lord brings back His own!”

What a picture.

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If any readers are interested in receiving Mark’s “Daily Nuggets,” contact him at mdittmar65@yahoo.com and ask to be put on the circulation list by putting “Interested in Receiving Nuggets” in the subject line.

Click: The Ninety and Nine

6-17-24

“Making a list, checking it twice…”

No, this is not a Christmas message gone astray. We all make lists… check our lists… are watched by others – bosses, teachers, coaches – according to lists. We “check the boxes.” We keep lists on our smart phones, i-Phones, tablets, laptops, desktops, and – if you are like me – on various corners of paper bags and Post-It notes, even if we cannot read them the next day, if we can find where we left them…

Items on lists can be trivial; or, of course, important. I will challenge us to consider starting some lists.

Have you ever wondered how many times you sin? This list may comprise of all the things God considers sinning. So if you can remember all the people you have murdered over, say, the last week, jot them down. The same with grand theft auto and major bank heists. Then, since all sins are offensive in the eyes of a Holy God, you can move down the list to incidents of fibs, “white lies,” outright lies and other euphemisms. Jealousy? Insults? Hate speech? Gossip? Check, check, check…

Items on that list can add up pretty quickly. “Great and small,” how many? One a day? Well… maybe more a few more than that. Maybe half a dozen in all categories, if nit-pickers (um, like God) would be checking it twice.

Big deal. Six a day. Or – hang on, I stink at math – that would be, like 40 or 50 a week? Gee, that’s like 2500 a year. Sins. You know, transgressions. That adds up to 25 thousand a decade. In an average lifespan that would be…

OK, OK, I’ll change the subject. We can stay in the religious realm but try to be more esoteric. Make a list of the times you have asked God to forgive you of something. I’ll bet a lot of people, even devout Christians, hope God will forgive them of this-or-that, but don’t always bother to plead their case in prayer. All right, then, try to calculate how often you think you need to ask God’s forgiveness over something. Large or small. Even when we fool ourselves in that regard, how lengthy would that list be, say, in an average week?

Or. Turn it around. How often have you forgiven someone when they have wronged you? Even, or especially, if they have not asked your forgiveness?

Is the portion of the Lord’s Prayer, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us,” coming to mind?

Which lists of these, and similar categories, have a multitude of check-boxes in your life; and which are short lists? Are they in the right proportion? We might find it hard to “populate” such lists; to remember everything; to try and keep count. But we know that God in Heaven sees all, knows all, and “checks” things like when sparrows fall to earth… heck, God even knows every tear that falls from your eyes. The hairs on your head. Your “comings and goings.” He knew us “before we were formed in our mother’s wombs.”

Let me share one more thing about lists – specifically about a God who does make a list and no doubt checks it twice, not that He needs to. The list with your name on it will be to your credit when you have accepted Christ; and the list with the Xs will not be used against you – will be wiped clean – when you have, instead, accepted Christ. God’s grace.

A loving God knows everything about you – He knows your name, so to speak – and that should not make you paranoid as you go through life, over those hours and days and years and decades. He catches you when you fall; He forgives you when you ask; yes, He knows your name.

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Click: He Knows Your Name

6-10-24

This week I attended a Clay Clark “Reawaken America” conference, one of its extensive tour of American cities. These gatherings of Christian patriots brings together an array of speakers, great numbers of attendees – activists and concerned citizens – and a menu of topics, viewpoints, and proposed solutions. And prayers, a lot of prayer.

Not just at this conference, but I think across America among different and differing communities, there is an inchoate sense that our nation has deep problems; and those problems can be called different names but are essentially spiritual problems. That could include different peoples’ different definitions of the word “spiritual.”

To the extent that this consensus is joined, we can only begin to solve our crisis by agreeing, even unto its terms. That must include the following proposition: A spiritual problem can only be resolved by a spiritual solution.

I did not advance that thought at the conference – I was there to cover it for the New York Post – and neither did I share the perspective, developed after I returned home, by which I titled this essay. But I came away with the strong conviction I want to share:

God does not love America any more.

Stick with me (as I frequently ask readers). I am not referring to the things – the sins, frankly – that we know displease God. The apostasy of established churches that deny the Divinity of Christ; the acceptance of sins like killing babies and legalizing sexual deviance; widespread abuse, prejudice, and divorce; the collusion of courts, the “educational” establishment, and media to silence and pervert Christian values; drugs, drinking, promiscuity; and… so forth.

No, those are not the factors I am talking about, despite being crises indeed. We know from the sweep of Biblical and secular history that the promotion or even toleration of such things led to the collapse of societies and entire civilizations… as historians note, not from invasions or conquest, but “from within.”

History has many examples of mighty civilizations that (as Santayana warned) did not learn from history, but rather over-reached as empires, and under-performed, ultimately, as moral entities; their doom was repeated, and assured.

To explain what I mean by God not loving us any more: I mean that literally. The Lord has never taken joy in meting out justice or punishment. We have been told that with individuals, He “chastises those whom He loves.” My point is that He loves us, He loves America… a lot. He gave His only begotten, incarnate Son for us. And, “while we were yet sinners.” Can God love us any MORE than that?

No, He does not love us any more. He cannot. The Lord God loves us to the max.

Will He regret our straying, our sins? Yes. Does He grieve over our unrighteousness as a nation? Yes. Can He “lift His hand” and bring chastisement, punishment… even destruction? Yes, He loves us that much. A Holy God cannot abide sin and rebellion. To believe that we can be in the presence of God when sin is willful, wanton, even joyfully exercised in His face, is self-swindling, suicidal folly on our part.

This must be a reminder, and an inspiration, to “clean up our act.” The nation is falling apart, failing everywhere we look. We waste our spiritual inheritance; we defy God; we dare God to act like God. But, through it all… He cannot love us any more than He does. If that is not hopeful enough as a rallying-cry of revival, let me turn my aphorism around:

He cannot love us any LESS, either.

God keeps to His word. He “changeth not.” As Christians, we may still repent: He proves Himself as a God of second chances; He offers forgiveness. The message of Jesus was about Redemption. Amazing Grace – even angels cannot know it or sing it; but we can, if we “turn from our wicked ways,” as His people and – once upon a time, maybe again – as His nation.

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Click: The Love of God

5-6-24

There are many things we know about God. Thank God (awkward phrase here!) that He has made Himself known in many ways. And because of Scripture and prophets and revelation there are also many things we understand, a different thing than knowing, about Him and His ways and His will for our lives.

Yet. There are uncountable things we do not know about God, and will never understand.

Never? Actually, yes. Even in Heaven we will not know everything about God and His ways. The angels do not: if they knew what He knows, if they could (for instance) see what God sees, and be where He is at all times, they would be as God. And they are not. This is one reason, despite our inclinations and superstitions, we should not pray to angels or saints or departed loved ones. Thank God, again, we can approach the Father’s throne directly, in Jesus’s name, praying to God.

Speaking of Jesus, we have a similar situation – knowing a lot about Him, His ministry, His purposes as Savior. But have you ever wondered about the things we don’t know about Him?

I have a new friend who cites the documentary record of Jesus’s life and ministry; and implies that since accounts were recorded after Jesus walked on earth, the Bible is unreliable. I would file these arguments under “I” for “Irrelevant,” because they deny that a sovereign God can work through inspiration; and they ignore the “harmony of the Gospels”: factors of time and space were overcome, and a multitude of prophesies – for instance myriad details in Isaiah’s Chapter 53, written 700 years before Christ was incarnate – were fulfilled in precise details.

But do you wonder? We know little about His childhood, for instance. The Bible says virtually nothing of Jesus’s life up to His thirty-third year. Arguably, His real “story” began when He was baptized in the Holy Spirit by John. That is when we have the accounts of His ministry, preaching, miracles, teaching, signs and wonders; and of His persecution, betrayal, suffering, death, and resurrection.

Why? God knows, to coin another phrase. We might have questions, and I believe God wants us to ask questions… to speculate on His ways… to dig deeper into spiritual matters, for ourselves. For example, we are told that Jesus was writing in the dust when the adulterous woman was brought before Him, to trap Him if He might answer contrary to Levitical or Mosaic laws. What is the point of telling us that He was writing in the dust… and not sharing what He was doodling? My guess – and I have to imagine the Mind of God to make this guess – is that the Lord might have been writing the numbers One to Ten. Why? It would have been a form of “prior restraint,” challenging those in the mob to consider which Commandments they broke before condemning a woman for a Commandment she broke…

Another “missing” set of events is What did Jesus do, really, in those 40 days between His rising from the dead and leaving the tomb, and physically Ascending to Heaven? Yes, we are told in the Book of Acts that He preached, and that many witnessed Him. But… we are not told what He preached. Or what miracles He performed. We have a few accounts of His miraculous appearing to the Disciples, His showing evidence of His wounds, some of His words…

But other than the “holy tease” (if I may so call it) that “the books of the world could not hold” all the accounts of those 40 days… we are not told much. (Soon afterward, historians like Josephus would; and church fathers like Eusebius would.) That book of the Bible, remember, is about the Acts of the Apostles, not of Jesus at that point.

So we are left again with what I am quite happy to accept as God’s invitation to speculate. I find great wisdom and comfort in the Gospel song “God Walks the Dark Hills.” You see, the Risen Jesus surely taught and preached and healed. We know that crowds gathered. Many marveled. Many came to believe in Him.

But I have a picture in my mind that, between His “events” like preaching and healing – maybe when crowds dispersed, when folks around Jerusalem slept – Jesus walked the dark hills.

Maybe He sought out individuals, not crowds. Maybe He ministered to the lonely, not only the curious. Maybe, while some people looked for Him… He looked for others.

That would be very much like the Jesus I know, because He still does that. Oh, we have to seek Him, to desire to meet Him, to want His presence. But, time after time, we will find that Jesus is already “there.” He has been waiting for us; actually, He is on His way to find us. He walks the dark hills, the ways and the byways. He walks in fields and meadows, by night and by day, in rain and sunshine. Through our joys and in our own Gardens of Gethsemane. In hard times and harder times. He’s seeking you out.

He still walks the dark hills, because He loves you and me.

This is what the high and majestic One says, the One who fills the eternal realm with glory, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in high and holy places, but also with the bruised and lowly in spirit, those who are humble and quick to repent. I dwell with them to revive the spirit of the humble, to revive the heart of those who are broken over their sin.” – Isaiah 57:15

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Click: God Walks the Dark Hills

Easter, 2024

Every Christmas, Handel’s Messiah is Top-Ten in peoples’ lives. In concert halls, churches, and community sings; on radio and TV we hear the oratorio, or at least the familiar “For Unto Us a Child Is Born” and the “Hallelujah” Chorus. Even if only once a year, this is a good thing, culturally and spiritually.

Handel’s masterpiece encompasses, as its simple title proclaims, the entire life of the Savior, from prophesy to Resurrection. Handel lived his life in Germany, in Italy, and thence to England where he generally is embraced as a British composer. Messiah actually was first performed in Dublin. I was privileged to see his writing desk on display in the Writers Museum in the Irish capital.

More provincial than Handel was his landsman Johann Sebastian Bach, born the same year, 1685, only a few miles away, although the two musical titans never met. Bach’s musical reach, however, arguably is greater than Handel’s geographical realms; as great as that of any mortal who ever hummed a tune or wrote a melody.

They may be compared – just as Christmas and Easter may be compared in the business of our lives – but if their works may be compared, it is unfortunate that Bach’s supernal religious works probably are less celebrated than Handel’s Messiah. Anyway, less “familiar” to the ears of average folks, especially during holidays. This is regrettable, because Bach wrote music of astonishing power, musically and of deep emotional import. The B minor Mass; Magnificat; more than 200 cantatas; motets; and two Passions, St John’s and St Matthew’s.

It might seem like I have begun with a predictable tangent before I have even begun this Easter message. But, no; I want to draw attention to the amazing way the human race’s greatest composer presented the Easter story. I wish it were better known to people: more familiar.

For Holy Week vespers services in Leipzig, Germany, Bach wrote the St Matthew Passion and the St John Passion, which were each performed in the St Thomas and St Nicholas churches on alternate years for decades. Three other Passions apparently have been lost. Bach wrote about 1800 pieces of music in his lifetime, and about 1200 are extant. Approximately half of his output was Christian music.

His Passions were series of cantatas to be performed during Holy Week, and in parts during services. They were similar to oratorios or operas but without costumes or drama – singers were assigned roles, and there was a musical “narrator.” The straight biblical narrative was distributed among soloists (evangelists and individual figures including Jesus, Peter, and Pilate) and choirs (various crowds, high priests, Roman soldiers, and Jews). We can appreciate the spectacle that the congregation beheld: a combination of church and theater, Greek-style drama and opera, music and voice, emotive performances.

Two broad categories commend Bach’s favored Passion (possibly the work of which he was proudest of all his compositions), The Passion According to St Matthew.

Musically, it is a succession of amazing melodies, alternating gentle beauty, then tense drama, then profound emotion. It has musical motifs and phrases interlaced, reflecting the underlying themes and meanings of events during Holy Week. The combinations of solo instruments and voices; unique combinations and harmonies; and grand choruses of voices and full orchestral power are impressive.

All is outpaced, of course, by the spiritual message, the meaning of every scene and biblical phrase, and the skill of dramatization – the masterful presentation of the events – and the spiritual significance of every element. This is not a mere recitation of happenings, or a reading of Bible verses. The “Narrator” guides us, but Bach’s composition is a stunning re-creation of the agony and ecstasy of the Crucifixion story. By the verses and voices, the St Matthew Passion provides the points of view of all the participants and observers – including God, by quoted Bible prophesies; Jesus, by His words; and even us, dramatically through the eyes of the crowds in Jerusalem.

History came to call Bach “The Fifth Evangelist,” the accolade bypassing even his spiritual mentor Martin Luther, because of his clarity of spiritual understanding and the power of his musical talent. Some 15 years ago I wrote a major biography of Johann Sebastian Bach, and with every fact I researched, every work I listened to (and listened again and again) my awe increased. He was, in the end, a theologian who could write music, the greatest that humankind has produced or heard. It will be savored as long as men have ears, in the words of H L Mencken.

My friend the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Edmund Morris wrote me a note wherein he called my Bach biography superior to his own study of Beethoven, if you will permit me a little boast (well, I don’t give you a choice). However, he averred that I painted a portrait of Bach as being too much of a Christian; that spirituality was not a major component of Bach’s character. I am afraid that this opinion reflected more of Edmund than it did of Johann. For all of the old German’s success, Bach confessed that he was proudest of being a follower of Christ; then, a husband and father in his community; then, a music-maker.

And here we meet the Easter theme. We must all be proudest – first importance in our lives; the focus of all we do – of “knowing Christ and Him crucified.” The Easter story, the dramatic Passions, should be read and listened to and meditated upon, every week of the year, not only during Holy Week.

Indeed, the message of the cross, the Resurrection, the Ascension, should be the themes of our lives. Church “days” are useful to help us focus, motivating our faith and devotion, reminding us of how the Savior of our souls suffered on our behalf. His sorrows and pain were endured to fully identify with broken humanity. His death was a substitute for the punishment we deserve as sinners.

God became flesh and dwelt among us, a sublime mystery. And – you know the story – His Incarnate Son’s resurrection from the dead is to show the promise of our eternal life. Unspeakable glory awaits us.

You can experience the story in what may be a new way. I recommend that you set apart a couple hours, open the link to the music video below, and let the story of Passion Week, the genius of J S Bach, and the mastery of conductor Karl Richter bathe your soul. The artistry of the performance matches the innovative music of Bach. Orchestra and choir are in a stark setting here. A giant cross above and behind the musicians changes its position amid bright and dark lighting, reflecting the tones of the unfolding Biblical text. I pray that you find the time to savor this.

And have an even more blessed Easter.

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Click: Bach St Matthew Passion BWV 244 Karl Richter in parts

3-25-24

Mama, I just don’t understand the things in Jerusalem this week. There are strange things happening every day. I am scared, very scared. And just a week ago, on the Sabbath, I was wild with joy, as I wrote you afterward. I write to you now about more recent events.

Maybe you have heard all these things. Or maybe not; maybe it will all be forgotten in a fortnight. I don’t know.

You remember how I wrote about this man called Jesus, the preacher and healer everybody talked about – some called the Messiah, including himself – how he finally entered Jerusalem. I wrote how the people, almost the whole city it seemed, welcomed him and cheered him.

Yes, I was in that happy crowd. I called his name. I put my cloak on the ground before him. I waved palms to honor him. Maybe you heard – he rode on a donkey. Some thought it strange, but you and I talked about how many ancient words and prophecies were fulfilled in his life and the things he did. Too many to number! And this was one of them, the humble king choosing to come as a servant.

Then. Day after day, it was like a nightmare. The Jewish elders accused him of blasphemy. Some people started to doubt who Jesus said he was, and made up stories about the miracles. The religious leaders made demands that the Roman rulers arrest Jesus. They threatened a revolt in the streets.

Pontius Pilate went along with their demands, and the people became a mob, convinced of all the lies being told. The Romans arrested Jesus, but that was not enough. Pilate offered the mob to pardon Jesus, but that was not enough. Jesus was thrown in jail, but that was not enough. In the public square, Jesus was stripped and whipped until the skin on his back was like bloody ribbons, but that was not enough. Usually, for the Romans, that is a virtual substitute for the death penalty, but that was not enough. The religious leaders and the mob screamed that Jesus be nailed to a cross until dead.

Pilate made a show, washing his hands of responsibility… but that was not enough.

No one spoke for Jesus. His mother wept, but all his friends scattered and claimed they never knew him. I am ashamed to say that I hid, too, and was silent. You know who else was silent? Jesus himself – he just quietly suffered. Mama, I just don’t understand.

I did watch as he carried that heavy cross to the Hill of the Skull outside Jerusalem. I watched as they nailed his wrists and his ankles to the wooden cross and raised it. I watched for three hours as he writhed in pain. He finally spoke a few words. You will be interested in things he said – he prayed to God that his tormentors be forgiven, for they know not what they do.

There were two other crosses, one on each side – condemned men. One mocked Jesus; the other called him Messiah, and begged forgiveness. Jesus uttered that the man would be with him in Paradise.

Jesus looked down on his mother, and said “Behold, your son.” Her sorrow was wrenching. Then he looked, it seemed, into my eyes too! And it was like he saw into my soul. It was like he saw all humanity. It was like he looked toward eternity.

Just before he died, he said, “It is finished,” and I wondered whether he meant his life… or his mission, his purpose. Maybe we will never know. Will this all be forgotten? It looks like the religious leaders, the government, maybe Satan himself, have won.

Mama, I don’t understand any of this. A week ago, the only things that many of us could think of were his teachings, his miracles, his healing. His love. And now… this. Please don’t condemn me. I went along with the crowd. They couldn’t all be wrong, could they? I went along with the government rulers. They couldn’t all be wrong, could they? I went along with the religious leaders. They couldn’t all be wrong, could they?

I must go to you, and let us search the scriptures together. For I seem to remember that he foretold that he would overcome death. And we have been taught that the Messiah would suffer the punishments for sin that we deserve. And he said he would rise again.

But, Mama, I have to tell you that he did die. I saw it. The skies turned dark and the earth trembled. It felt like all of creation groaned. A Roman centurion looked up and called him the Son of God. But they took his dead body from the cross. They prepared it for burial. They put him in a tomb, and they sealed it.

Mama, two days have passed, and he has not come back to life.

There are strange things happening every day, but Jesus rising from the dead is not one of them. Mama, I just don’t understand.

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Click: O Sacred Head, Now Wounded – Bach’s St Matthew Passion

3-18-24

There is an “Irish Shop” a few towns away from where I live. It sells imported items and offers annual tours to the Ould Sod. The American-born woman who operates the shop with her husband always seemed to appreciate our visits, and, like my late wife, is a kidney transplant recipient, so there was never a shortage of conversation.

Once my daughter Emily, who has lived in Northern Ireland for 20 years, visited with us. She shared the reasons she move there – visits as a missionary to street kids in the “troubled” neighborhoods wracked by sectarian violence and the well-documented ancient hatreds; how her ministry was scrupulous about being “Christian,” not Protestant or Catholic in its outreach; about the many severe dangers in neighborhoods they entered with hot coffee and warm words. And how, soul by soul, hatred is dying and love is rising. Her heart is with those people – so is mine, especially now that I have two Irish-American grandchildren.

One time I entered the shop alone, and by way of introduction – for she has many customers – I said, “I’m the guy with the daughter who works with the street kids of Derry…” She remembered and said, matter-of-factly, “Oh, yes. Teaching the Protestant kids to hate Catholics.” No tongue-in-cheek. She was not kidding. Automatic reaction. Despite having heard testimonies, even having talked with Emily.

That remark, that attitude, knee-jerk prejudice, taught me anew about the lingering presence and power of hate.

I am sadly reminded that hatred and prejudice persist in this world. Some people seem happy only when they hate. Some people are virtual professional haters about causes and issues halfway around the world, even when they have never been to those places. These tendencies are in the news every day. For me, I still nervously listen to short-wave radio newscasts from Londonderry/Derry, on the border of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, where, yes, bombs still explode.

St Patrick knew about hatred. He was not a legend; that is, he really existed, unlike some other “saints” who nevertheless are celebrated. He lived in the late 400s, born in western England and kidnapped by Irish marauders when he was a teenager. As a slave he worked as a shepherd, during which time, somehow never despondent, his faith in God grew. He escaped to Britain, became learned in the Christian faith, and felt called to return to Ireland. On that soil he converted thousands, he encouraged men and women to serve as pastors, he worked against slavery, and helped quash Druid paganism and heresies. Among his surviving colorful lessons is using the shamrock to explain the mystery of the Trinity to converts.

He left Ireland on occasion… to travel through European lands, preaching, sharing Christ, explaining the Gospel, establishing church communities. Four hundred years after Christ, it is notable that even when the mighty Roman Empire adopted Christianity as the state religion, it was Patrick who first preached to alien and hostile tribes and barbarians. Roughly contemporaneous with St Augustine in Northern Africa, he was the first great missionary since Saint Paul himself.

Today, almost 1600 years later, in an odd way St Patrick is more of an American saint than Irish or universal. Why do I have that opinion? In America, not Ireland, cities hold massive parades, dye entire rivers green, and festoon homes and schoolrooms, even those of Blacks and Jews and Hispanics, in green. I once was in Dublin on St Patrick’s Day, and in the Temple Bar section of the city there were uncountable drunks in funny green hats, green vests, and “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” buttons. To a person, they were all… American tourists.

The Irish, north and south (and in the Anglican Communion too) revere St Patrick in a more proper and reasonable manner. My son-in-law Norman McCorkell, Emily’s husband, shares some thoughts here. He is a BA (Hons) graduate of the Irish Bible Institute in Dublin, and is passionate about discipleship and mission.

Patrick passionately embraced the best of Irish culture, redeeming it for the Gospel by firmly standing against elements that were incompatible – ending the slave trade; reducing tribal warfare and murder. His life was an example of a new and different kind of courage – one that lived fearlessly and peaceably through God’s promises in an atmosphere containing daily threats of those horrors: murder, betrayal, and enslavement.

Despite the violent, and even magical, opposition from locals (Druids and chieftains), and criticism from church leaders (conventional bishops in Britain), Patrick used his lack of formal church training to work creatively within his context. Instead of employing church structures used by the civilized Roman Empire – based in cities, where bishops were supreme – Patrick formed an ecclesiastical model more like the Irish, who were rural and tribal. The inhabitants of Ireland had no settled towns, roads, currency, written law, government bureaucracy, or taxation. Society was decentralized, and organized around tribes led by local “kings.”

With Patrick’s influence, monasteries were established and developed as places of spiritual devotion and learning. Young men who had once given their lives to clan feuds were now transformed by the good news of Jesus Christ. Monasteries became “sending centers,” noted church scholar Steve Addison: “the Irish church took on the character of a missionary movement.” And thus Ireland became a glowing spiritual base for sending out monks into western and northern Europe to “be pilgrims for Christ.” This made Celtic monasticism “highly flexible, adaptable, and able to be transplanted – everything that the Roman Empire was not.”

“Sending Monasteries” grew rapidly throughout Ireland and Europe, bringing with them unprecedented prosperity, art, and learning. These population centers on the continent would eventually develop and become cities.

And by the way, Monasticism became bastions of civilization and Christianity during the long “Dark Ages.” I thank Norman for these words from “the Ould Sod” itself. These are lessons for today: what we can do, too, even by ourselves and against great odds, to bring the revolutionary message of Christ’s Good News to others. Love, not hatred.

Patrick was a saint for all, and is a Saint for today. He taught us not to drink green beer, but how to overcome challenges, hear the Holy Spirit, formulate a vision, and change the world. Not just his land but the world; and the world ever after.

Click: St Patrick’s Breastplate (Be Thou My Vision)

3-11-24

Certain phrases catch the public’s attention all the time, appearing and disappearing. Some legitimate ideas have names that fade; some casual terms become part of the language. Among the latter, I was reminded this week as I wrote an essay for RealClearPolitics, is “ticket” – as in a political party’s slate of candidates.

Until 1888, generally, the separate political parties printed the ballots that voters used at polling places. This was less for the sake of convenience than it was to influence and, especially, hold voters under the watchful eyes of party workers at polling places. Those printed “tickets” were large and colorful and could be seen as voters inserted them in glass bowls (further eliminating secrecy) and in some districts voters were obliged to state their preferences aloud!

Times have changed. Coercion and corruption might be as pervasive, only subtler, today.

Anyway, “State Of the Union” is a phrase that is uttered uncountable times around this time every year. The Constitution uses the term, but not capitalized, as it urges but does not require the president to deliver what is, in effect, a corporate report on the government. Article II, Section 3: The president “shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.”

For more than a century the information was delivered as an “Annual Address,” although it was transmitted only in writing until 1913. Occasionally, presidents skip the report… but recently, of course, it has become an elaborate production with applause-lines, guests to be introduced, and as a prime-time televent.

Routinely the presidents have assured the country that “the state of the union is sound.” But it has morphed into a shopping-list of priorities and legislative wishes. Occasionally, as this year, it is a virtual convention-style rally and an opportunity to scold political rivals.

Since the phrase is bandied about these days, I propose thinking about the state of the union in terms that presidents no longer confront.

The state of the union – let us say the spiritual state of the union; the real state of things; the health and well-being of our society – sucks. I apologize for using that term, but its general acceptance (as you will note unless you don’t watch TV or read newspapers or overhear little children chatting) actually illustrates my point. Our standards have been lowered; our discourse has grown coarse; our self-respect is disappearing. Otherwise I apologize.

But it is almost impossible to use words and phrases or point to shocking news and statistics in order to make my point about the real state of the union. Crime is rampant. Drug use is widespread. Almost half of births are to single mothers. Many school districts are “graduating” students who are functionally illiterate. Half of marriages end in divorce. Neglect, abuse, addiction, suicide, and such malignancies touch almost every family.

Such problems have been trending, if not cascading, in recent years. But newer pathologies are parts of the state of the union. The government’s excessive spending sprees will bankrupt our children. And foreign wars bankrupt our resources. An invasion by hordes of Unknowns is changing the state of the “union” in incalculable ways. A tsunami of drugs kills millions. Smash-and-grab crime and unpunished criminality make daily life a dangerous proposition in cities and towns. Censored thought, a “cancel culture,” inhibits free speech, free association, free thought.

America has always faced challenges and problems, even occasional crises, but by no measure can we claim to live in a Land of the Free anymore. The economy is unstable; daily activities are danger-filled; the future is uncertain. Such is the state of the union.

Oh, yes, a majority of the population no longer believes in God. In this case, we may ask, which is the chicken and which is the egg? No matter: it is a rotten egg.

My weekly essays promise to “put a spiritual song in your heart.” Today, am I committing false advertising? Well, things are rotten; and things s… stink. Neither wishing nor lying about our state of affairs will make them different. Students of Bible prophecies can discern some news about End Times that we might see, as through a glass darkly. The anti-Christ? We see signs. A ten-nation confederation? That might be the European Union. The “Kingdom of Rosh”? Russia, perhaps. But we see no hint of the United States in those scriptures. Will there be an America in the world’s next days?

I am glad that the Bible is ambiguous about certain things. For instance, there will be a period of Great Tribulation, and scholars are unsure at what point Believers will be “raptured” – taken to Heaven, as predicted often throughout the Bible. But it will happen.

Worldly people believe all manner of things, some of them nonsensical. I used to be Editor of Marvel Comics; I know what kids are eager to believe. Adults, too: Many people have “itching ears” for lies and nonsense. But the End Times – the “Midnight Cry” – is not strange in the sense of being un-believable. It is very believable… indeed is to be hoped, and embraced. At midnight there was a cry made… watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh. – Matthew 25:13.

In the meantime, let me say: If you don’t know Jesus, you can go to hell.

Ah. For this phrase I will not apologize. Because you will go to hell. When He comes at the End of Time it will be too late to alter your destiny. The Bible tells us to recognize the “signs of the times.” It is not a difficult thing – look around you, at the state of the union.

As we work to make things right again, whether we succeed or not, it is our calling. And as we work, seeing the Right as God gives us the vision, knowing that we will meet Jesus in the air, we can have a spiritual song in our hearts.

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Click: At the Midnight Cry

3-4-24

Jesus.

Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.

Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.

Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.

Jesus.

Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.

Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.

Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.

Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.

Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.

Jesus.

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Immediately after a devastating tornado hit his house, but with his family safe, a Kentucky man was able to praise the Name of Jesus.

Click: There’s Something About That Name

2-26-24

I am going to take you on a brief tour of some surprising places. I have had the wanderlust all my life, and have discovered that some legendary places (the “Room with a View”) can be mundane; and some very memorable sites greet us unannounced.

For instance, strolling around Venice (yes, one can walk around that city), I once turned a corner and came face-to-face with a plaque identifying a modest building as the birthplace of composer Antonio Vivaldi. It seemed to me like holy ground.

In Rome I stood in the plaza in front of the meticulously preserved Pantheon, where once stood the Temple Agrippa. Inside are the tombs of the artist Raphael and the composer Arcangelo Corelli (I think one of the most beautiful names ever borne by a person) but the plaza is where St Paul, having arrived in Rome by foot along the Appian Way, first shared the Gospel in the seat of the Roman Empire. I stood where he stood. Holier ground.

In Ireland, at a roadside stop by a modest chapel, I saw in its even more modest cemetery the gravestone of the great poet William Butler Yeats… revealed by no special markers nor arrows. By pure serendipity I found myself on holy ground, as it felt to me; secular – but you may know what I mean.

I had a similar experience at the other corner of Ireland, so to speak. A friend and I had traversed, roughly, the perimeter of that wonderful island over two weeks. Near the vacation’s end we sought lodgings outside Belfast. Rather by chance – without, that is, any premonition of another “holy ground” experience in the offing – we found ourselves in a little village called Crawfordsburn in County Down. There was an ancient Old Inn (it calls itself), rambling and half-timbered. It had charms and, most importantly, a room to rent and a restaurant.

I was startled to read an unpretentious plaque on the wall when I registered. It stated that decades ago members of the legendary Inklings group occasionally met there (otherwise, more famously, in Oxford, in England). That was the famous circle of literary friends that included C S Lewis and J R R Tolkien. Moreover, since its establishment in 1614 the Old Inn had been a meeting place for writers including Swift, Tennyson, Thackeray, and Dickens. Holy ground, of sorts, for me, a writer.

Most pertinent, or compelling, according to the plaque, was that the Old Inn was where C S Lewis and his wife Joy Davidman spent their honeymoon.

Most readers will be quite familiar with Lewis’s classic stories in the Chronicles of Narnia books. I had not read them (almost alone among my friends and my own children). I hope that you readers are familiar with Lewis’s life and his tragically short marriage to Joy; there have been books and movies about them. Married late in life, Lewis was a former atheist who came to a saving, and influential, relationship with Christ. He fell in love with Joy, an American Jewess who died of cancer only four years into their marriage. Shadowlands is one telling of their remarkable and bittersweet life together.

The feeling of a presence on “Holy Ground” was scarcely related, I have said, to The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe or such classics. But C S Lewis was also known for his writing (and BBC broadcasts) as one of the greatest of all Christian apologists of any era; he was gifted to explain the Gospel in logical, layman’s terms. (By the way, Lewis’s favorite poet was Yeats; what a trip of “coincidences” that was for me!)

I am only one of millions whose faith has been awakened, challenged, informed, illuminated, inspired, and fortified by the simple truths C S Lewis powerfully explained and gently shared. Of his many works in the field (The Screwtape Letters; A Grief Observed; Surprised by Joy) the thin collection of essays Mere Christianity is the enduring classic.

I can paraphrase his powerful refutation of the common human tendency to acknowledge (really, dismiss) Jesus as “merely” a great teacher:

I want to prevent anyone from saying, “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God.” That is the one thing you cannot say! A man who was merely a man but made the claims Jesus did would not be a great moral teacher; he would either be a lunatic – like a man who says he is a poached egg – or evil. Or the biggest of all liars.

You must make your choice. Either this Man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon… or you can fall at His feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher.

He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

Such is the beginning – perhaps, even, the culmination – of arguments you can make about this Jesus with atheists, agnostics, skeptics, scoffers, and, actually, your own self when you have moments of doubt.

C S Lewis brilliantly allowed us to relate to the Incarnation of God Almighty. Mighty? Yes. Distant, unapproachable? No. We can know Him as the Lover of our souls.

And, knowing Him… we can stand on holy ground.

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Click: Jesus Lover of My Soul

1-29-24

These thoughts were shared by a friend of a friend a few years ago. They are perspectives on a timeless thought about the Ultimate Friend:

One day Satan and Jesus were talking. Satan just went to the Garden of Eden and he was messing and laughing, saying:

Yes sir. I just took a world full of people out there. More than I ever have! I set them up, used all sorts of bait. I knew they couldn’t resist. They are all done!

What are you going to do with them? Jesus asked.

Oh, I’m going to have fun with them, Satan replied. I will teach them how to marry and divorce, how to hate and abuse each other, drink and smoke and do drugs, and of course I will teach them how to invent guns and bombs to destroy each other. I’m really going to have fun!

And what will you do when you get tired of them? Jesus asked him.

Oh, I’ll kill them, Satan said with a look full of hate and pride.

How much do you want for them? Jesus asked.

Satan answered: Oh, You don’t like those people. They are not good. Why would You want to take them? You take them but so many hate You. They will spit in Your face, curse You, and kill You. You don’t like those people!

How much? Jesus asked again.

Satan looked at Jesus and answered sarcastically: All Your blood, Your tears, and Your life.

Jesus said, done!

And that’s how He chose to pay the price.

God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. – Romans 5:8

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Click: Mozart: Ave Verum Corpus

1-22-24

Quick: Word-Association. I say “Life,” you think – what? An old magazine? A prison sentence? A breakfast cereal?

This week the annual March For Life occurred in Washington. Somewhat ironically it was held during a brutal, raging snowstorm – thousands and thousands of people figuratively shaking their fists at Cold Death, and affirming Life.

Half a century ago Roe vs Wade became the law of the land – or, more properly, it swept away many laws of this land. It was consequential, and the Supreme Court ruling can be seen as defining an “era.” Then, recently, another ruling reversed much of Roe’s finding, and now we live in a Post-Roe Age.

Rather than outlawing abortion, the recent Dobbs Decision essentially lets the individual states decide policies regarding abortion – matters of sanctions, “pain thresholds,” gestational life and viability, coercion of medical staffs, etc. It was inevitable that fifty, or more, bitter debates would emerge from Dobbs. As people dispute the beginning and the end of life, the debates about abortion will not end.

It was recently calculated that the Dobbs decision likely has resulted in more than 50,000 births that otherwise would have been ended. In the political numbers games, that will be compared to millions of babies murdered (excuse me, “terminated”) under Roe. Having just employed both euphemisms and incendiary words, I am aware of the emotionalism that inevitably attends this discussion. Like many people, from President Trump to neighbors and relatives, I once was pro-abortion, or indifferent to its horrors; and have repented. Some of those neighbors and relatives gave birth instead of aborting. Some, in fact, are people whose mothers decided against aborting them at the last moments.

“Life.”

It is more – we need to remind ourselves above the din and clamor of political debates – than magazine titles or breakfast cereals; and surely more than merely escaping the abortionist’s tools. But when we cheapen Life amid arguments about scientific data, and “hardships on pregnant woman,” and a mother’s right to privacy vs a baby’s right to life, etc, we also cheapen the value of Life-beyond-birth. It is no coincidence that during the Roe era there was a precipitous rise in child abuse; neglect and abandonment; the dissolution of the nuclear family; and, at the other end of the line, growing acceptance of elder abuse and neglect, and (call in more euphemisms!) “mercy killings.”

Twenty years ago I interviewed Norma McCorvey, the woman who was the “Roe” of Roe vs Wade. The simple and shy women seldom granted interviews, so I was fortunate to glean first-hand impressions of her crises, the manipulation she endured, and her transformation to anti-abortion advocacy.

My late wife Nancy became an expert on Life, so to speak – having received, at death’s door, a transplanted heart. She also received a kidney transplant, and endured diabetes, strokes, cancer, celiac disease, amputations, and other challenges. She wrote about her encounters with Life:

I was diagnosed with heart disease when my three children were 15, 14, and 11. After three heart attacks in 10 months the doctors told me that I would not survive a fourth. This news came on my 42nd birthday. Within the month I was transferred from our local hospital to Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia and put on the transplant list for a heart; and for my failing kidney as well.

Events moved quickly, and I really didn’t have much time to think about what was ahead. As a diabetic, I had assumed that at some time I might need a kidney transplant – I had never thought about needing a new heart! I also assumed that the whole process was like changing a battery: take out the old and put in the new.

Not quite. Because my doctors could not guarantee my survival at home for longer than two weeks, I had to stay in the hospital, with heart monitors attached to my chest, and an IV tube continuously feeding me medicines that kept my heart working at its maximum possible efficiency.

In the beginning of this process, I think most patients in my “group” of potential organ recipients were, like me, a bit naive. We didn’t know about some of the complications associated with the surgery. Strokes, blood clots causing the loss of limbs, and blindness were just some of the potential problems. Our group of approximately 16 patients was relatively healthy or at least stable, but every now and then reality would strike.

Without warning, people “coded” (heart stopping); sometimes they could not be revived. Other times those who had received transplanted organs would return to the hospital with rejection (the body fighting the new organ).

We all know there are no guarantees in life, but no matter how young or old, we tend to take some things for granted. However, when hospitalized in a heart-failure unit, never knowing what the next minutes might bring, I developed a deeper sense of what was important to me.

I prayed for more time – time to be a mother to my children, for us to be together as a family. I cried out to God, “How much longer?” He answered in the words of I Peter 5:6,7: Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him; for He cares for you.

And I learned to trust Him. Just as He was taking care of me, He would take care of my family. And each time I asked “How much longer?” He would remind me of a promise I made to Him that I would stay for as long as He wanted me to. And God gave me His total peace.

In all ways my hospital stay – eight weeks before organs became available; then three weeks after the operation, until I could go home – was a good experience. I came to know God in a more intimate way, to learn to trust Him and His ways, and to appreciate all that He has given me. I began praying for the other patients on the floor; first for those on their way to the ER, then weekly Bible studies, then prayer-support groups. We started a family ministry that lasted more than seven years.

I have seen all three of my children grow up. Heather became a youth minister; Ted is a television news producer [now in Washington DC] and Emily moved to Ireland after doing missions work [and has started her own business of American-style foods]. And I have four beautiful grandchildren. I am very proud of them all.

At one time I did not have real hope, leaning on my own view of life. But as Psalm 119:50 says:

My comfort in my suffering was this: “Your promise preserves my life!”

Nancy lived 16 years after her new heart and new life. There’s life and there’s Life. There’s Life, and there is Living. There is extended life… and there is Eternal Life. Go ahead and embrace the euphemisms! God lives in them and we can too.

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Click: I’ll Have a New Life

1-15-24

I have shared the story many times, but not here, of my mother’s passing; or to skirt the euphemism, her death. She would have been a hundred years old next year, and died a couple decades ago. The circumstances attending her death were fairly remarkable, but all the times I have shared the story my contexts were medical, statistical, and with emotions bouncing like a pinball between sad and astonishing and humorous.

But a friend recently saw them in a spiritual context. Through the years I certainly appreciated the spiritual component, but not the lessons worth sharing. Cue Paul Harvey’s “Now you’ll know the rest of the story…”

My parents had moved to Florida as many retirees are wont to do; my two sisters and I remained up north, visiting on occasion. The occasions grew frequent, however, when Mom’s health slipped precipitously. She had been a lifelong Christian, church-going and always devoted to Jesus. Not affecting her salvation but affecting her health were also unfortunate lifelong devotions to cigarettes and booze.

Smoking and drinking accelerated her decline from various ailments, although, oddly, her lungs and liver were about the only things that worked right as she eventually was placed on a hospice list. I hope it is not a “spoiler” to any reader to share that hospice is not a get-well regimen: it is, formally, a recognition that the patient is dying, and is designed to make those final days or months comfortable, not expecting a cure.

Mom was put in home-hospice care with visiting nurses; my sisters and I rotated visits to Florida to help Dad and say our good-byes. Stubbornly, it seemed, my mother got weaker, and stronger; she grew foggy, then lucid; she wasted away but hung on. Each of our “good-byes” were in fact “so longs,” as my sisters and I returned again and again.

During one of my visits a kindly neighbor said, “It must be hard to lose your mother…” I replied: “It’s almost impossible!”

However Mom did go downhill until she was barely conscious. In a virtual coma. We were able to put a chip of ice or bit of Jell-O between her lips, only a few times a day. She exhibited several of the “signs of impending death” the Hospice booklet listed. Finally for two solid days there was not a sign of life from her beyond a weak pulse.

Then one night – I slept on the living-room sofa next to her hospital bed – she made a faint gurgling sound. No other signs or movement. Almost 24 hours later, she mumbled; no discernible words, but an apparent attempt. On the next morning, there were words, but random and unconnected.

Over the next days she managed more ice chips and Jell-O and even broth. And she spoke words. Sentences. They made sense. I’ll tell you how much sense: they were Bible verses. Fragments at first, then random, then full verses, but as if in her sleep.

Bible verses! Mom was not opening her eyes or making eye contact at first; but she was reciting passages from the Bible. Soon she recognized us, spoke our names… but rather than asking where she was, or why we looked so concerned, she just recited Bible verses. Eventually, lines from hymns.

I will leap ahead, so to speak. Mom recovered her strength. The bed was put aside. She resumed a life, slowly (she moved around the house, but with a walker). She gained some weight. She never had eaten much, but now she did eat and even cooked – we all had a Florida Thanksgiving reunion where she prepared a full meal. She did not resume drinking, and I was grateful that my kids were able finally to know their Oma – sober, and tender and funny, as I had known her in my own childhood.

She lived almost a full “bonus” year before a natural death overtook her. Hospice nurses said that patients were known to live maybe six months after being “listed,” but they scarcely knew of bounce-backs like Mom’s, much less of a full year.

But when I told Mom of her “bounce-back” while she seemingly was unconscious… she was as incredulous as nurses or neighbors were. I have said that she was religious all her life, but she knew that she never had committed all those Bible verses to memory.

“Rick, some of them I know, of course. And I’m sure I heard them all in Sunday School and church, or have read them, but I never memorized all of them! I never tried to!” I read to her the verses she recited from that deathbed… and try as she might, she could not recite them from memory again. But there had been many, and they had risen from her lips, complete and correct.

This was the story I often have told – shame on me, almost like describing magic tricks or a trained-seal act. My friend refreshed me with the spiritual lesson. What had sustained Mom when medicines did not? What “filled those empty spaces”? We witnessed an example of “the Lord worketh in mysterious ways His wonders to perform.” What lessons should the rest of us learn from this?

Psalm 119 talks about “hiding the Word in our hearts.”

I had known that verse, and always assumed it was a recommendation to memorize Bible verses. It is. But more than that, it tells us (in Isaiah 55) that “My Word that goeth forth out of My mouth shall not return unto Me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please.”

The power of God’s Word blessed my mother, even when it had been heard and processed casually. It accomplished things in her. It blessed us, and may it bless those who hear this story.

“Faith comes by hearing…” There is no seed that when planted cannot grow in mighty ways, multiply, and feed others. Let us just be the fertile soil. God will plant; the Spirit will nurture; Jesus will be glorified. Please be encouraged to keep the things of God close, even in “casual” ways, whether words, messages, songs; open to lessons the Bible offers, or Christian music you can listen to. Absorb. Share. Hide in your heart.

In the end, it wasn’t hard to lose my mother. She was ready, after a few more tasks – even if she did not fully know the assignments – at the End of the Way.

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Click: When I Get To the End Of the Way

12-18-23

‘Tis the season to be jolly, but there are some things about Christmas that manage to rankle us. It is not the fault of the little baby Jesus but let’s be honest, a lot of us register annoyance about a lot of things a lot of times around Christmas. I’m making a list and checking it twice.

“Christmas is just getting too commercial.” “Why do the stores start putting Christmas stuff out earlier and earlier?” “We have to fight the crowds again?” “Oh, gosh, half the lights are out!” “Where did we pack the decorations?” “Wasn’t it our turn last year?” “Oh! I forgot to get her a present!” “Those dumb songs on the radio again!”

… and so on. Notice that none of these familiar complaints is about God becoming incarnate to live among humankind, to offer us a means of salvation, eventually to die for our sins. No recorded complaints from Mary and Joseph, who found no place to stay, no clean or comfortable place to give birth. We know that story.

I have a version of that story, not in the Bible but plausible – that there was “no room in the inn,” or any inns in Bethlehem, not because the town was crowded during tax-season. Perhaps the innkeepers did not want a girl who was pregnant before she was married staying in their establishments. If that is the case, we can add that such indignity to Mary, the virgin miraculously bearing the Son of God Almighty, brought forth no complaints from her.

A manger is something unknown to most contemporary folk. It was not a place where animals lay, as this Baby would, which would be humble enough. It was where animals ate; so in the straw where Jesus was placed there was spittle, chunks of old food, and bugs.

Yet that familiar scene is abstract to people today; or at least it is sanitized. Our mangers are neat folding cribs in displays. The stable is an organized crèche in paintings. The animals are now depicted as Disney-like four-legged witnesses; but at the time they were smelly creatures that left their droppings on the nearby ground.

So it all seems abstract, despite the best efforts of Hallmark cards and inflated-plastic front-yard arrangements. The abstractions are seductive: 2000 years ago; a faraway land; donkeys as transportation. Not to mention the history and theology: how would most of us react if a poor couple showed up at our doors, the young unmarried girl about to give birth; perhaps even claiming to bear the Savior of humankind?

I invite you to think of this familiar-but-abstract story in another way.

Women can imagine, but scarcely identify, with Mary. We know from her prayer called the Magnificat (“My soul doth magnify the Lord”) that she could hardly comprehend the miracle. Some men might be able to identify with the surprising news that confronted Joseph, that his girlfriend was already pregnant. However, he and Mary both knew what the angel shared; and they knew Scripture (as recorded later in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Mary and Joseph had separate bloodlines, of course, but each fulfilled ancient prophesies about the ancestry of the coming Messiah).

But I suggest that the easiest member of that young family with whom we can identify is not Mary, not Joseph, but… Jesus Himself.

The birth of Jesus was foretold. God planned for that Son to be born.

God knew each of us, too – before we were formed in our mothers’ wombs.

Jesus was the Son of God.

We, as Christians, are the Children of God.

Jesus came to earth with a Holy Mission to fulfill.

Each one of us has a calling, too; God has a will for our lives.

Despite coming from Glory, Jesus was a Man of Sorrows, destined to suffer and die.

As followers of Christ, our lot is to endure persecution for His Name’s sake.

Jesus’s Kingdom is not of this world; He prepares a place for you in Glory.

“This world is not our home”; we trust in life eternal, in Paradise with the Savior.

We might not have been born in mangers, yet during this Christmas season let us more closely identify with “our elder brother Jesus.” He came to earth, after all, to identify with us… to know temptation and pain and suffering and sorrow. Being without sin Himself, that Holy Child would eventually reach out and take our sins upon Himself.

Marys can’t do that. Josephs can’t do that. Even angels can’t do that. Jesus did. Jesus does.

Imagine the Savior of your soul in the virtual manger next to you. The only difference? He is the Son of God. But imagine at the same time something not so abstract: We have the opportunity to have Jesus live within our hearts. The Messiah came to earth, born a humble Babe, in order to reconcile you in that matter too.

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Click: Jesus At the Mall

12-4-23

Friends have asked me for my opinions on the violence and bloodletting in the Middle East, and I know people are asking each other the same question. I have realized an anomaly in the situation – in the Christian and conservative communities in America there seems to be near unanimity on the “issues” – Israel is right on every aspect of the conflict; Palestinians are wrong. Yet many ask their friends, earnestly, what their opinions are, as if doubts are nagging them.

Of course, the repeated questions might not indicate doubts, although facts are elusive things. And we must all realize, even subliminally, the wisdom in the ancient Greek dramatist Aeschylus’s dictum that in any war, the first casualty is truth. Yet conservatives and Christians largely hew to the Israeli versions of events, not always exercising discernment, nor caring to.

As I am asked for my opinions, I do have some. I am persuaded that so-called Replacement Theology might be valid – that Jews were the Chosen People because they were chosen to be the bloodline of the Savior. I believe the prophetic words that Jews who have rejected the Savior will, in the End Times, be reconciled with their Messiah. (More systematized than Replacement Theology, without getting too much into weeds, is Dispensationalism, whose Supersessionist origins are not recent theories but can be traced back to St Augustine.) I find nothing in Scripture that persuades me that in these in-between times those who reject Jesus and even persecute Christians “get a pass” in this life or the next. “All who believe and are baptized shall be saved… oh, also, Jews who deny Christ and denigrate Christians…” Not saith the Lord.

Christians who think that Jews do not need to know Christ tacitly approve of consigning them to hell – which is, in its way, the most bigoted act of hatred we can imagine. When this attitude extends to other “free passes,” on national platforms, greater misery follows.

Naturally I will say what I should not have to say – except to knee-jerk folks who are myopic. The nightmarish atrocities described in the October Seventh attacks are repellent and to be rejected and condemned. Period. American TV news anchors occasionally have shown videos of devastation and mangled bodies in Gaza after Israeli raids – “unless these are faked videos.” Never are Israeli videos similarly questioned.

As a student of history I remember the Irgun and Stern Gang terror movements that bombed the King David Hotel and school buses; who carried out the “Night of the Beatings” where British soldiers were kidnaped, beaten in public. Or other incidents where people were hanged and their bodies booby-trapped; or the Deir Yassin massacre of a Palestinian refugee camp where children and the elderly were mutilated and women violated. But (?) those Israeli gangs were on a crusade to drive the British from Palestine so Israel could be established. Closer to our time, 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon and (with the assistance of Lebanese Christian gangs, the Phalange) massacred as many as 3,300 refugees who had been driven from their homes in Israel. I remember videos of children strapped to the fronts of IDF jeeps – “human shields,” like we hear about today.

Many of these terrorists in these gangs, by the way, became “statesmen” and prime ministers – Yitzhak Shamir; Menachim Begin; Ariel Sharon – some even received Nobel Peace Prizes years later. In Egypt, a terrorist named Anwar Sadat who was twice jailed (and escaped) as a terrorist opposing the king, also won a Nobel Prize years later, as President.

Yet among common citizens – those “fortunate” to survive these endless acts – the tears of mothers are the same, no matter who cries, from either “side” of the conflict. But mourners do more than cry. I recall that Jewish leaders like Albert Einstein compared the Irgun terrorists to Nazis; I recall that Osama bin Laden wrote that Sharon’s atrocities in the Shatila refugee camps “inspired” him.

I am aware that some Jewish sects, some Orthodox scholars, do not believe that the present “state” of Israel is the Zion promised in Scripture. I am aware that, at the other side of that discussion, there are contemporary Zionists who believe that Israel should extend from the Nile to the Euphrates or beyond. I am aware that multitudes of people would be happy if the nation of Israel would be “pushed into the sea,” and all the murderous implications thereof. God forbid; God forbid; God forbid. Such matters manage to make the current crisis fade in significance: they have historic, apocalyptic implications.

My opinions? I wonder about “equivalency,” a word we often hear. Responding to the brutality of 1400 murders on October Seventh, and those kidnaped – by killing 13,000 civilian citizens of Gaza, so far? I wonder whether years of Israel letting only 11 per cent of Gazans to leave the Strip; rationing clean water; and limiting electric power to several hours a day can be considered not an excuse but an explanation for violence.

I don’t wonder, however, that any of this can be filed under WWJD – What would Jesus do?

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This year, any observance of Christmas has been canceled in Bethlehem. Despite, at this writing, the indiscriminate bombings occurring mainly to the north and south of Bethlehem – which is not in Israel but in that “no man’s land” of the Occupied West Bank, just as Gaza is not a country or a part of another country – leaders fear that bombs might explode in Manger Square or other areas.

There also is a desire among Christian leaders in Bethlehem to make a statement about the situation in Gaza. “Madness,” Pastor Munther Isaac, of Bethlehem’s Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church, called it. “This has become a genocide with 1.7 million people displaced.” Speaking for leaders of other Christian denominations in Bethlehem including Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Armenian, he challenged American politicians: “God has placed political leaders in a position of power so that they can bring justice, support those who suffer, and be instruments of God’s peace.”

Speaking of opinions, the president of Bethlehem Bible College, Jack Sara, noted the opinions of many American Christians who conflate Israeli politics with Biblical eschatology. He quoted an American church leader who called for Israel to “reduce Gaza to a parking lot.” Among the damaged buildings in Gaza, by the way, were some of the oldest Christian churches in the world, dating back to the days after the Resurrection.

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Concerning Manger Square in Bethlehem, there is a powerful song about a heart-wrenching story that was in the news a few years ago. Britain’s Independent newspaper reported then: “For 30 years, Samir Ibrahim Salman had made his way dutifully to his task as bell ringer and caretaker at the fortress-like stone and wooden church revered by millions as the birthplace of Jesus Christ.”

Samir “crossed Manger Square to get to the church to climb the steps to the fourth-century bell tower” as he did every day of the year. One day, “Samir was struck by a bullet in the chest. It was an hour before an ambulance could reach him but by then, he was already dead. The Palestinians claim he was killed by an Israeli – the Israeli army says they did not fire a shot near the church. Samir, who was mentally disabled, may have been unaware of the danger.” Medical crews feared an ambush.

Another death. Should our opinion be altered? Whether 1400 die, or 13,000 – or one – are mothers’ tears any different? Was there anyone who even wept over Samir? He was a Palestinian, but not Islamic; he was a Christian. Does it matter, Christians? He had been beloved of the town, and special to the church, because he rang those bells as a volunteer every day of the year for decades, different bells for different occasions, serving Christ and his neighbors.

Who pulled the trigger of the gun that killed the simple Christian Bell Ringer of Bethlehem? To those of us who are ignorant of the issues, who blindly perpetuate stereotypes, who support missions we don’t understand – and don’t support missions we ought to – those of us who have opinions not based on knowledge or facts – we can shudder at the thought that we might have been closer, in commitment of spirit, to the triggerman than to the Bell Ringer that awful day in Manger Square.

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A note. A friend who sometimes reviews my essays made a “hit me like a ton bricks” comment. She pointed out something we all know but need to know better: Neither “side,” for the most part, in this eternal conflict, knows Jesus. Yes, Christians have been involved in wars, many wars we may judge as unrighteous. Yes, we remember Jesus’s words: How can you say to your brother, “Let me take the speck out of your eye,” when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite! But where is Jesus these days? As neglected as His bell-ringer? Reminders need to be… re-minded.

Please listen to the song about that Bethlehem Bell Ringer:

An ancient church in Bethlehem, A target in a battle of men, Stands on the ground where Christ was born Trapped inside the eye of a storm…

Soldiers move from door to door; Mortar fire, it’s all-out war. Army tanks patrol the street, They treat civilians with conceit.

Samir Ibrahim Salman fulfills his task the best he can. Each day at dawn he tolls the bells, While all around the army shells.

He walks across the Manger Square; For thirty years he’s lived near there, A simple man who spends his time In quiet prayer at Jesus’ shrine

Upon the roof a sniper aims His bitter heart with hate inflames Samir walks slow, his back bent low And is struck down by the bullet’s blow….

An ancient church in Bethlehem, The bells of peace won’t chime again. The people now all live in fear, Grieving wails are all you hear.

Oh Jesus, please, help Palestine. Turn all that blood back into wine. Oh Turning Wheel, Divine Design, Please bring peace to Palestine.

Click: The Bethlehem Bell-Ringer

9-11-23

“9-11” will never lose its meaning in America; maybe it will have evocations as long as the world lasts. More than a mere “event,” it is one of those moments in history that people will always associate with where they were, what they were doing, when the news of the terror attacks occurred.

It might not lose its meaning, but will it lose its significance?

My son Ted was an intern at one of the major cable news networks at that time. Its studios are across the Hudson from lower Manhattan, and every day – before 9-11 – he could see the Twin Towers from the station’s parking lot. On that day he put in extra hours, working non-stop on the breaking news, correspondents’ feeds, editing video footage, some of which, featuring falling bodies and splattered corpses and collapsing monoliths, have still never been publicly shown.

I frequently have challenged audiences in some of my speeches if anyone could state, even approximately, the number of victims of terrorism there were on 9-11. Hands go up, and the invariable estimates are around 3,000. And my invariable response is this correction:

No. There were approximately 3,000 victims of murder on 9-11. The victims of terrorism are about 330-million… and still growing.

If there were “silver linings” to the clouds of smoke and dust on 9-11 it was that America was briefly united, even unified, in our response, grief, and resolution. Skeptics worried that clarity, patriotism, and some common purposes would be short-lived.

Of course, the skeptics were right. Many young people responded by volunteering for military service. American adventurism, however, has led to ambiguous results if not Pyrrhic victories. A Patriot Act inherently is flawed, perhaps compromising as many rights as it purports to protect. According to elections, surveys, and streets filled with spilled blood and broken glass, our citizenry is more divided than ever.

The terrorists are following an agenda. But who wrote it?

We are in this state not because of a few hijacked planes on 9-11. There were attacks before; many since; and 9-11 only represented the most palpable and perhaps symbolic of the threats America faces. In fact, as with the Roman Empire and all empires and decadent societies throughout history, such attacks are virtual metaphors for the self-destruction that essentially plagues us.

America has invited this situation by our abandonment of core values. Our society – indeed the West in general – is a Post-Christian culture. Among those who might say “I told you so” are the “great cloud of witnesses” described in the Bible (see Hebrews Chapter 11) and, by the totality of His Word and Commandments and Judgments, God Himself.

For further commentary (“Don’t take my word for it!”) I will commend some reflections by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. He was the Soviet exile, a man who fought Communism and somehow survived persecution and prisons (the gulags) and escaped to the West after his writings were smuggled out of Russia; they won praise and Nobel Prizes.

I will quote him briefly but wish I could share his thousands of pages. Find his books! His analyses – his warnings – are dispositive today. They are not mere critiques of monstrous Communism. They recognize the Bureaucratic State that threatens “democracies” today. They attacked all of the decadent West. They recognized that the Crisis of the Twentieth Century was not confined to the Communist State into which he was born.

The infection, he said, is not Communism per se – although, of course, Marxism is alive in American education, media, and party politics – but secularism. The rejection of God. Therefore he attacked not only Stalin of the past but the Bidens of the present; not only the Soviet apparatchiks but the American Dark State:

If I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than… “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.”…The failings of human consciousness, deprived of its divine dimension, have been a determining factor in all the major crimes of this century.

We are witnesses to the devastation of the world, be it imposed or voluntarily undergone. …sucked into the vortex of atheism and self-destruction. This plunge into the abyss has aspects that are unquestionably global, dependent neither on political systems, nor on levels of economic and cultural development, nor yet on national peculiarities.

It was Dostoevsky… who drew from the French Revolution and its seething hatred for the Church the lesson that “revolution must necessarily begin with atheism.” That is absolutely true. But the world had never before known a godlessness as organized, militarized, and tenaciously malevolent as that preached by Marxism…. hatred of God is the principal driving force, more fundamental than all their political and economic pretensions.

Through decades of gradual erosion, the meaning of life in the West ceased to stand for anything more lofty than the pursuit of “happiness”, a goal that has even been solemnly guaranteed by constitutions. The concepts of good and evil have been ridiculed for several centuries; banished from common use, they have been replaced by political or class considerations of short-lived value. It has become embarrassing to appeal to eternal concepts, embarrassing to state that evil makes its home in the individual human heart before it enters a political system.

Atheist teachers in the West are bringing up a younger generation in a spirit of hate for their own society. Amid all the vituperation, it has been forgotten that the defects of capitalism represent the basic flaws of human nature, freed from all limitations just as the various human rights are; that under communism (and communism breathes down the neck of all moderate forms of socialism, which are unstable) — under communism the very same flaws become completely unbridled in any person with the last degree of authority; and that everyone else under that system truly does attain ‘equality’ — the equality of destitute slaves.

Instead of the ill-advised hopes of the last two centuries, which have reduced us to insignificance and brought us to the brink of nuclear and non-nuclear death, we can only reach with determination for the warm hand of God, which we have so rashly and self-confidently pushed away…. If we perish and lose this world, the fault will be ours alone.

From more than 50 years ago Solzhenitsyn speaks to us. Prophesies fulfilled before our eyes. Solutions under our noses.

Several correspondents have written lately to me about so many “gloom and doom” subjects in these messages, when I promise “a song in your hearts.” Well, yes. But I am a reporter of Biblical things and current events – I try to eavesdrop on the Lord. So these messages convey the facts of our situations, not fantasy.

God, however, writes “between the lines”! Turning to Him, repenting and reforming, will heal our land and dispel gloom and doom!

It is not too late – as individuals and as a nation!

For I the Lord will hold your right hand; Fear not! I will help you! (Isaiah 41:13)

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A dear friend has written that this is a song not in our hearts but to our hearts:

Click: Hold to God’s Unchanging Hand

8-28-23

Nothing in the Holy Bible is an accident. Every word of Scripture has application to our lives. That we are not nomads or shepherds is irrelevant. Truth, sin, purity, love, and God’s sovereignty are matters as pertinent to us today as to any people through past centuries and many lands. The smallest details are as important as the larger narratives.

In that perspective I invite a look at the first of Jesus’s miracles. In the second chapter of John’s Gospel we have the account of the Wedding Feast at Cana. It is where Jesus turned water into wine as the feast ran short.

This is the first of Jesus’s recorded miracles. We may marvel, as the wedding couple and the guests did. The important point is to focus on the miracle, not specifically the wine (for all its symbolism, I suppose Jesus might have made a miracle at the wedding feast of bread or fish or… wait; that’s for later). But The miracle itself was intended to impress the guests. Jesus’s actions have significance. His presence as a “mere” guest affirms His own humility, the “servant king.” And so forth.

But let us pause with those who focus on the role of wine at this event. Many people – and multiplied-more others – have lives that are scarred by alcohol abuse. It was the case in my family, and probably the same with most of you readers. It is a weakness in the human condition; and although specific to wine and liquor, I am persuaded that many people are basically addicted to being addicted; alcohol is the tendency or “flavor” or option of many self-destructive life-choices.

Virtually every addict, no matter the frequency or pleasure of the “highs,” regrets the addiction… sometimes (or repeatedly) seeks release… grieves over the consequences. Relationships, jobs, family, career, health, life.

Stick with me, please. The focus of the Water-Into-Wine miracle should not be the food or wine, nor even the miracle itself… but the Miracle-Maker.

Let us say that you have an addiction. We all do, in myriad ways, even to the common addictions to sinning, transgressing, pride, not fully serving God. Many believers – and I address well-meaning Christians – often pray that we be freed from bondage to this or that temptation. But those prayers are often in this context: “Help me be strong, Lord, that I can battle these problems. Watch me!”

As God reads our well-meaning hearts, we often mean: “Get me to that point, Lord, where I can resist these challenges on my own.” And it’s likely we really mean: “I want You to be proud of me, Lord. Give me wisdom and strength that I can overcome these temptations by myself.” And we are in effect wanting to get to the point of saying, “Thank you, Lord! I will take over from here!”

That’s spiritual maturity, right?

No, that is spiritual immaturity.

Let us never forget the Biblical reminder that “we can do nothing except through the Christ who strengthens us.” Remember that Jesus wants to run with us, not watch us hand off the baton and then cheer from the bleachers. Why did God send the Holy Spirit except to be our constant Guide and Comforter and Wisdom and Strength?

Was Christ’s work on the cross something that we should regard as “finished” when we think we know how much to receive from it?

In the case of our focus here, sometimes for addicts the greatest miracle is not to be free of the alcohol… but rather to become addicted to Jesus. “I’ll take it from here, God…” is self-swindling. A greater personal “overcoming,” a greater miracle, is to change our lives that we learn to be dependent, not independent. To be dependent on Jesus instead of the bottle, our own wills.

We are impressed by the account of that miracle at the Wedding Feast, turning water into wine. In our own lives it would not be a matter of weakness, but of strength, if we were to plead for a different miracle. Many things we simply cannot do on our own. God, please turn the wines of our lives – our tendencies to sin; our disobedience; our addictions – back into water.

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Click: Wine Into Water

8-21-23

The pictures and videos of the devastating fire in Hawaii, in the city of Lahaina on the island of Maui – much less the bare news and statistics – are nightmarish. Arising spontaneously; whipped by bizarre winds; approximately 3000 structures destroyed almost instantly; many people literally incinerated. Death tolls of more than a hundred folks are sure to rise, as many hundreds are unaccounted.

We tend to use words like “unprecedented” when we hear of such disasters, yet we sadly and too easily can recall other natural disasters like Pompeii 2000 years ago, or the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, when upwards of 8000 people died.

When the news of the fires broke, I called a friend in Seattle. He has a home on Maui, about two miles from the fires, as I learned. He has been reassured that his home was safe, yet he wept as the memories of familiar and favorite neighborhoods – and, of course, possibly many friends and neighbors – might be among the horrific losses.

Our minds might go back to another legendary fire, the Chicago Fire of 1871. Debates still rage, virtually as heated and wild as the flames themselves: Was the fire’s origin of “man-made” causes? How responsible were poor city planning or faulty responses in Chicago… or in Lahaina? Or are such disasters (for instance, in great forested lands) inevitable and cyclical? My webmaster, who is formatting this message, recently was on a car trip half a continent away from a burst pipe in his basement. Family heirlooms and uncountable photos were ruined. That sort of a flood can be as personally tragic as the 1889 Johnstown Flood.

My friend with the house on Maui shed real tears for the disaster in “paradise,” despite his own property being spared. And yet – I am not naming him to protect his privacy – his tears of compassion were being shed despite the immediacy of his current situations. He is dealing with two very serious medical problems; and his wife is very sick, too, at the moment.

How quickly beautiful oases of serenity and security, like Lahaina or suburban Seattle, can become virtual “valleys of the shadow of death…”

A prosperous Chicagoan in 1871 had lost properties and much of his wealth in the legendary fire. Horatio Spafford was further devastated by the Wall Street Panic and Depression of 1873. With meager resources he decided to have his family – his wife and four daughters – live for a spell, frugally, in England. Attending to final arrangements, Spafford sent his wife and daughters ahead, intending to join them soon afterward.

But a cable arrived from England with news that their liner had collided, mid-Atlantic, with a Scottish freighter. His four daughters were among those who drowned; more than 300 souls in all. Even in an ocean there are “valleys of shadows of death.”

As Spafford sailed for England to join his wife who survived, the captain of his vessel slowed the ship at one point and announced to passengers that, as close as he could reckon, they were at the approximate spot where that “famous, recent maritime disaster and loss of life occurred.” Can you imagine the anguish of experiencing fire and flood (so to speak), so personal, and even floating on ocean waters where his dead daughters might have been below?

Spafford, a devout Christian and supporter of the noted Chicago evangelist Dwight L Moody, reacted in a way that only the Holy Spirit could embrace and give strength – anyway, I am not sure I could have had the spiritual courage… to write a poem in reaction. That poem became the words of one of the great hymns of the church: “It Is Well With My Soul.”

When peace like a river attendeth my way, When sorrows like sea billows roll, Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, “It is well, it is well, with my soul.”

Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come, Let this blest assurance control – That Christ has regarded my helpless estate, And hath shed His own blood for my soul.

My sin – oh, the bliss of this glorious thought! – My sin, not in part but the whole, Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more! Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, o my soul!

It is well (it is well) With my soul (with my soul); It is well, it is well with my soul!

It would seem to take superhuman faith to compose such words at that moment. In fact – whether with this background or not; the Hawaiian wildfires on the news, or not – it takes great faith to read these words, sing that hymn, and believe that truth.

Because whatever befalls the believer, it is well with our souls if they are in Jesus. Even in the worst circumstances… health or status… self or family… things of the moment, things of the future… even loss of jobs, of homes, of friends, of lovers… “let goods and kindred go,” in the words of Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress”… God is yet the Captain of our ship, our souls.

Impossible to accept, believe, embrace? That’s what faith is.

• Sometimes friends are revealed as inconstant; and we realize that in a situation, we had hope in a person, instead of faith in God.
• Or we pray and plan, and yet the programs fail; and we realize that we sought direction from everyone and everywhere except the One who orders our steps.
• We know what we want; and then we are reminded that God knows what we need.

There are mysteries in the Ways of God. I do not believe He sends disasters or disease, even to “teach lessons.” He is not a child abuser. Yet there is sin in the world, and our sins have corrupted the beautiful world He created, and sometimes obscure our vision of the beautiful life He promises.

God’s love does not depend upon our understanding of it. Even receiving it does not depend on our total understanding of it! As His ways are mysterious, His love is profoundly without limit. We trust and obey; there’s no other way. And – even in the face of circumstances seemingly to the contrary – it will be well with your soul.

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Click: It Is Well With My Soul

8-14-23

(A guest message by our sometime contributor and all-time friend Leah Morgan)

My apologies to this bee.

I’m so sorry, that’s false fruit. You may be salivating for pollen, but you’ve just received some miscommunication. There’s no nourishment here.

Our own bodies are so magnificently engineered with such heightened perception, they can mistakenly respond to false stimuli too. Our nervous system perceives danger and reverts to a sympathetic condition that propels us in to a fight-or-flight response. High alert! Adrenaline pumping! Physically ready to react! But… it was just political news. Or… it was just someone’s relational chaos we insist on listening to.

The hazards of living in this sympathetic state of perpetual high alert – or stress, as we more commonly know it – are devastating for us physically, mentally, and emotionally. We are meant to immediately revert to operating in a parasympathetic nervous state after dangers pass.

It’s the opposite of fight-or-flight; more like rest-and-digest. But if there are perpetual false alarms, and we continually fatigue our brilliant system, essentially crying wolf, we teach our bodies to never feel safe.

We won’t rest well or digest well, when our nervous system is locked into focusing on danger, real or perceived.

It’s why a particular declaration in Psalm 23 is so profound and such a paradox. He prepares a table before me in the presence of my enemies.

Our nervous system downgrades the priority of resting and digesting, when an enemy is present and a threat is imminent. It reserves its energy for allowing us to escape through confrontation or retreat. Fight or flight.

Eating a prepared meal at a table as an enemy lurks nearby, not mindlessly grabbing a snack on the run for our lives, is a startling portrait. It contradicts how we’ve been wired to live. It invites us into a relationship like this with the Good Shepherd who provides for our thriving in every climate, even under duress.

What kind of sheep can rest and digest when a wolf is near? One who is led by love, not driven by fear. A sheep who is confident that every wolf has to first pass through the gate – a sheep with a Shepherd so good he becomes the gate. He positions His body at the entrance and the wolf has to take out the Shepherd before he can ever get to the sheep.

That has been attempted. You might have heard of this great showdown outside the city gate. It commenced at Calvary and culminated in a garden. The mouth of the gate of the tomb was rolled away to reveal the Shepherd still capable of protecting the sheep and defeating the wolf. Hell itself is no competitor against Him.

So when He prepares a table for us, we eat. We are able to eat. To rest and digest. And we never believe it to be our last supper.

(www. Leahcmorgan.com)

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Click: That’s The Power

8-7-23

Alienation.

It is one the most prevalent, and serious, of problems in society today. No… not an “alien nation.” That controversy – or threat, or mystery, or conspiracy of silence – I am persuadable is a manufactured distraction from real, honest, terrestrial dangers.

But we do hear a lot about people who are “alienated” from society, from their families, from neighbors and co-workers. It is ironic and therefore true (irony always derives from truth) that the more crowded our society is… the more “inter-connected”… the more “welcoming,” “accessible,” “integrated” we are – the more alienated people have become.

Alienation, isolation. Many people – again, despite the crush of neighbors and the menu of diversions – are convinced of having arrived at the end of the line. Their lines… their lives. They know nobody; they trust nobody; they have nobody to turn to.

How can they know if we don’t tell them? That situation is a lie from hell – they are not isolated; they don’t have to feel that way.

OK, your family has left you. But Jesus hasn’t.

Your friends have betrayed you. Hey, it happened to Jesus too; He knows. He will not betray.

Counselors have been worthless? Don’t trust in people.

Government outreaches are… Let’s not even go there.

Calling out to God is a prayer that never goes unanswered. Opening a Bible will lead to Comfort. Finding a Christian to talk to, pray with, share things… will never come up empty.

Prayer cancels alienation.

Lonely people already have an answer, even if they do not know it. “When two or three are gathered in My name…” You can be the loneliest person in the Lonely Spot in the middle of Lonelieville… and there will be two gathered when you seek the Lord. The Holy Spirit is promised to be with you in those moments when your heart cries out. You are never alone.

The Bible also talks about the “Great Cloud of Witnesses” in Heaven who watch us… and cheer us on.

In my life, I went through a period of doubt, who hasn’t? and my father said he trusted me. My mother always prayed with me. But my mother’s brother, Ed, and his wife, my Aunt Mildred, had strayed from the family’s Lutheran roots and became “religious nuts” (in my parents’ view) – they went to a Billy Graham crusade. And, horrors, they were more committed Christians.

Aunt Mildred used to phone me out of the blue and encourage me – no “hard sell”; she was praying for me, that’s all. Uncle Ed, when he visited Washington DC when I was in college, arranged lunches and reminded me… that he was praying for me. In the midst of my wise-ass doubting stage, I never was offended, but… I never forgot these gestures either. When my cousin Irene went to college near me outside Chicago the year I worked there, I almost felt like I would catch some strange spiritual disease from her…

Well, eventually I became more of a religious nut than they (um, a Pentecostal reference). Eventually I delivered one of the eulogies at Uncle Ed’s funeral. And Reni is my dearest cousin.

Eventually, you see, I realized the power of prayer… was not always my prayers, but even the prayers of people I didn’t know were praying for me.

Allow Captain Obvious to share this: God is sovereign. He can do what He wants. He does do what He wants. Yet… He has instituted the “channel” of prayer – the language; the means of communication. Can prayer influence God? Well, the Bible has examples of that; yes. Does He answer every prayer? Yes. But… sometimes in “His time.” And sometimes His answer is No.

That’s where faith and trust come in. But it all pleases God. Prayer is the key to Heaven, but faith unlocks the door; do you know that song?

And in the meantime… friends are praying for you. Strangers are praying for you. The hosts of Heaven are watching and cheering. And, as I said, when you pray, you are never alone.

… and, hey – in the meantime, what happened to “alienation”? Praying people are in the Family of God. Not alone. Will never face challenges alone, or problems alone.

Once upon a time there was a group of men, gathered from far and wide, risking their lives to make momentous decisions. Gathered in a hot room – this was in the middle of summer in the 1700s, and they kept the windows closed – but they suddenly felt frustrated, at odds, arguing, almost alone in their deliberations.

It was the Founders of our Nation, the brightest and bravest, but all of a sudden in a confused crisis… can we say alienated, not knowing which way or ways to turn? Benjamin Franklin stood up and suggested that they do something immediately that the group had not done yet… and do it every morning henceforth: Pray together.

The fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much (James 5:16).

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Click: Prayer Is the Key To Heaven

7-17-23

I never have taken the trouble, either when choosing classes in college, or casually consulting the Google gods, to know the actual definition of a weed.

Occasionally in my life I have owned properties large and inviting enough to grow gardens, and I have attempted their cultivation. That is, until realizing that… I have a “black thumb.” I have a friend, an ex-pat from England, who has the natural British ladies’ gift for planning, planting, growing enormous Technicolor and fragrant flower gardens with pathways, benches, little oases. Whidbey Island, now North Carolina: wherever she lives, gorgeous flowers grow and thrive.

It might not be only a British thing. Another friend is American-born, and lived some years in the Netherlands – oh yes: a nation synonymous with floral splendor – and returned to the US and to a second career as a floral and garden consultant. In any event, this gift is not a Marschall thing.

My disinclination, or deadly thrall, might have originated in fifth grade, when a teacher asked me to use “horticulture” in a sentence. A budding (ha) wise guy, I innocently declared, “You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.” Compounding my personal War Of the Roses, the afternoon I spent in the Principal’s Office was, ironically, next to a large vase of flowers.

Anyway, my working definition of a weed is, simply, an unattractive or inconvenient flower. That works for me. This theory does not prevent me from being fascinated rather than put off by the middle ground (literally) between beautiful flowers and pesky weeds: Wildflowers.

With all due respect to British garden-architects and those who make living rooms and lobbies resplendent with colorful and fragrant arrangements, “Mother Nature” (I choose to regard her as Mrs God) can outdo them all.

• When I lived near deserts in the American Southwest, I marveled at the times – maybe only one day every year or two – when the slightest rain-shower “made the desert come alive.” Then, those barren landscapes miraculously bloom with carpets of strange and brilliantly colored flowers.
• In the same mysterious ways, nature’s ambassadors – random breezes, hungry insects, and wandering birds – carry seeds and pollen far and wide. They cause pretty wildflowers to grow in unexpected places like highway medians and roofs of urban apartment buildings.
• One of the miracles of wildflowers is their resilience, matching their beauty. Seeds found on millennia-old ancient fabrics or in Egyptian tombs will still sprout and bloom when watered.
• Delicate wildflowers, counter-intuitively, are as hardy as they are beautiful. Seemingly fragile flowers, no matter how tiny, grow in inhospitable places – between barren rocks, in cracks of city sidewalks, sometimes sideways out of brick walls.

I believe that God has not only chosen to array His creation – that is, His gift to us, a beautiful world – in blankets of colorful, often surprising, beauty and fragrance, but He desires that we see lessons: a larger purpose.

Some people look at flowers that struggle, plants that die, wintertimes that leave trees and plants barren, as signs of a hostile universe; death is at every turn. But for every Winter there is a Spring. Every seed will sprout. Every desert will bloom. In a version of the “glass half-empty or half-full” paradigm – another proposition I never understood – we can know the answer to the question, “which prevails in the cycle: death or life?”

We know that Life prevails. Jesus – “the Rose of Sharon, the fairest of ten thousand flowers” – proved that.

This truth represents more than a nice metaphorical garden to walk through, or a bouquet we can put on our table. It is a promise. It confirms life and the renewal of life. It allows us to view life optimistically. What we may grieve over today; what we cannot see for a season; what we might cling to, despairing of any results or answers… are like seeds.

Seeds will sprout, in their own time and with patience and cultivation. And they will bloom. And bless. As flowers, they will produce more pollen and seeds. Life goes on… beautifully. And when it appears most fragile, we are reminded that life is real, life is earnest; life is determined, life is triumphant.

In my naïve folk-wisdom, I see those vagabond reminders of life triumphant, wildflowers, as floral counterparts to another of God’s colorful promises, the rainbow.

I listed some strange and hostile environments where wildflowers “take root.” But people are wildflowers too. Wild flowers. We know them; we should be them, in some form we can choose. At one time in history it was common that children left their homes in their early teens, sometimes losing all subsequent contact with their families. But they took root, blooming, blessing.

The histories of races and peoples can be traced today through the evidence of seeds and plants that were carried and cultivated in migrations of centuries past. The Virgin Mary, it is estimated, left her parents to be with Joseph when she was barely 14. My daughter moved to Northern Ireland almost 20 years ago, and is thriving faraway with her husband, children, and a wonderful career.

Be willing to be a wildflower seed. Eagerly await where God’s breezes and the flights of His birds and bees may carry you.

“Be fruitful and multiply”? Also take root, bloom, and be a fragrant and beautiful flower – not one of life’s weeds – to be blessed, and to be a blessing, where you find yourself. Wild flowers don’t care where they grow.

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Click: Wildflowers

7-3-23

I once made a deal with my late wife that we would split the duties facing us, the issues we had to deal with as a couple. I mean, it was a sort of a deal. My plan was that she would handle the minor things like utility bills, car payments, and house repairs. I would concern myself with larger issues like world peace, nuclear disarmament, and the energy crisis.

It seemed like an intelligent plan, to me.

The human mind, or in my case the “mind,” has an infinite capacity for self-deception. Beyond that, self-delusion. Even further afield… well, you see a pattern. And recently, here, we considered the matter of “Progress” as a false god, evanescent at best; a cruel chimera at worst.

I invite us to switch our consideration from material miseries to those pathologies of “self,” as we started listing above. Self-ishness can be a positive motive when it inspires prudence, protection, and preservation. As with airplane safety procedures, we can best care for others when we properly tend to ourselves.

In a Christian context, I frequently remind believers who are active, very active, in ministries and missions, that Jesus came to earth to save them… individuals… you and me… not (primarily) our programs, plans, and priorities. Those things will follow, but He died for our sins, not those of some committee or organization.

Is that “selfish” in the pejorative sense? No – especially if we identify it as Jesus’s point of view. Is it selfish, grabbing glory for ourselves? Heaven forbid. In fact when we truly consider who we are, it is, instead, very humbling.

Of all the things increasingly in short supply in the world today, I say that Humility is the most threatened of resources. Being humble. And the opposite of Humility is Pride. Ah, Pride – which I consider the deadliest of the Deadly Sins, and which to me is the wellspring of all other sins. From back in the Garden, down to every hour of every day in our own spheres.

Pride preceded rebellion against God: “We know better than Him.” Pride: “I can ignore God’s commandments; I’ll bet He spares me the punishment.” Pride: “If God is good, how can He keep me from Heaven?” Pride: “I am not as bad as a lot of horrible people around the world.” Pride: “I give to charities; I care about the poor people. Isn’t that enough?” Pride: “Why should I bother God with my problems?” Pride: “Thank God I am not like other people…”

To be filed under “Unconscious Irony,” Pride Month has just ended. By proclamations and the movement’s very flag, this Pride is not about academic achievement or conquered diseases or even material advances, but the celebration of sin. It is as if a month, or special holidays, were devoted to cheating on one’s taxes or betraying marriage vows or abusing children. Yes, my seat belt is fastened; these are incendiary remarks these days. But this new, branded Pride also encompasses choosing to ignore or overrule or endorse things that the Bible condemns, over and over.

Humankind’s Pride assumes many forms, many of which are not so obviously toxic; but sin is sin. I remember debates some short years ago when computers played chess matches against humans, and sometimes won. “Is this the end of humans’ dominance in the world?” people asked, with some prescience. My reaction was that if computers won such competitions… computers had been created and programmed by humans, so didn’t “we” win after all?

The same “long view” is needed in the current discussions about Artificial Intelligence. This bundle of Brave New World technologies (and projected consequences) has dominated a lot of research and development; is actually fueling some stock-market booms; and animates a lot of hopeful dreaming. But it is prompting apocalyptic fears, too.

It is my opinion that if “machines” become able to fool us, influence our decisions, steal our independence, and lull us into deadly slumbers… this will not be a perversion of liberty, but the natural consequence of unbridled liberty. The history of humankind – our natural tendencies; “human nature” – has been a chronicle of fooling each other, influencing unsuspecting people, and stealing goods and ideas. In the 21^st century we merely have better tools.

So the fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.

With the Bible as our road map, so to speak, throughout history, we can know the way forward. History’s second best-seller, The Pilgrim’s Progress, is a brilliant if thinly veiled metaphor of life – its pitfalls, detours, dangers, and its ultimate joy-filled destination. Some people “get it”; that is, wisely choosing between Pride and Truth. But even John Bunyan himself learned it after mistakes, failings, and persecution – he wrote The Pilgrim’s Progress from a dank jail. John Newton only was able to write Amazing Grace after almost suicidal remorse for being a slave-trader.

Those experiences qualify as major ingredients in Humility, as discussed above. It might seem unfortunate, but nevertheless true that Wisdom usually follows stupid decisions. Liberation cannot come except from bondage. Salvation is from sin. Joy is measured against misery. Are these paradigms in fact unfortunate? No, it is a way that Life works. Let us learn.

And let us pay attention to words, the way we express our understanding. Artificial Intelligence: we should be a little skeptical – humble – about what constitutes Intelligence. And we need to respect the qualifier, Artificial. Some things we don’t understand; some things we never will understand.

That is God’s way. There is “Intelligent Design” – I think God planned Life so that for all the manifold things we cannot understand, we seek Him.

For the Lord gives wisdom; From His mouth come knowledge and understanding; He stores up sound wisdom for the upright; He is a shield to those who walk uprightly (Proverbs 2: 6,7).

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A precious example of someone who has had a right to ask “Why?” and want to understand things in life is Joni Eareckson Tada, the talented singer, artist, speaker, and paraplegic. I interviewed her at Billy Graham’s retreat center The Cove a few years ago. Here, with Joni and her mom; and Cliff Barrows and George Beverly Shea of the Billy Graham Association. Please click on Joni’s brief testimony and song:

Farther Along, We’ll Know All About It

5-15-23

Traditional liturgical formations in worship are not universally followed these days. Their separate parts once represented the essential aspects of Christ’s ministry and significance, just as His life on earth was comprised of separate, meaningful acts. That is, lessons for us, to understand Him better.

When Mary conceived, it was the fulfillment of many prophecies. When Jesus was born, it was the long-hoped Incarnation, God in human form. When He preached, He explained the ways of God. When He healed, it showed the power of God. When He forgave people – how presumptuous, except as the Son of God – He shared the love of God.

When Jesus gave Himself up, He became the sacrifice for the penalties our sins should be ours to pay. When He was betrayed, He understood our sorrows. When He was tortured and He suffered, He understood our pains. When He died on the cross, He fulfilled His mission – “It is finished.” When He arose, it represented the promise that we too may overcome physical death and have life eternal.

Traditional church services similarly would focus on aspects – for instance, the “Agnus Dei,” the “Lamb of God” to remind us of the sacrifice of this Sinless Man. And so forth. Losing this structured reminder of the Savior’s ministry is a down-side of contemporary, free-form worship.

I invite you to see the life of Christ, even for only a moment, in perhaps a different light than you are used to.

All of the familiar events in Jesus’s life, even the uncountable prophesies fulfilled, even the powerful miracles, suggest that He was the Son of God. Suggest? Only suggest? Is this blasphemy? No… stick with me. Of course we know the prophesies, the signs, the wonders, represented His anointing. Of course we know and respect His claims. Of course we know the confirmations that He rose from the dead; let us remember that so did Lazarus and the daughter of Jairus; and they are not regarded as Saviors of humankind.

What I am asking us to remember is the half-forgotten holiday of the church calendar, Ascension Day.

“You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be My witnesses, telling people about me everywhere – in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” And after saying this, Jesus was taken up into a cloud while they were watching, and they could no longer see Him. As they strained to see Him rising into Heaven, two white-robed men suddenly stood among them. They said, “Why are you standing here staring into Heaven? Jesus has been taken from you into Heaven, but some day He will return from Heaven in the same way you saw Him go!”

This account is from The Acts of the Apostles, the very first chapter; the history of the Early Church. This was the confirmation – the final puzzle-piece, if I may – that Jesus was not only a teacher or a healer or a prophet; not merely a persecuted good man; not just one of history’s misunderstood and saintly persons. He was physically lifted to Heaven… reunited with His Heavenly Father… promising us that He will live in our hearts in the Person of the Holy Spirit of God. The heroes of faith of the Old Testament appeared at the scene to seal the event, and His promise.

The bodily Ascension of Jesus confirmed that He was indeed the Son of God. Messiah. God-with-us.

That act, Ascension, which is celebrated this week – 40 days after Easter – as well as the promise Jesus made, the Gift of the Holy Spirit (on Pentecost, soon to come) should not be forgotten by the church, or by His followers. For centuries, in fact, the Ascension Of Our Lord virtually was the most important observance-day in the church year. In some countries (do Americans know this fact?) it is still observed as a public holiday.

The sobering challenge we face in the 21^st century is not whether we identify as Christians. It is not how we justify our social views based on what we think the Church says (or used to say). It is not whether Christian traditions “inform” our life choices.

It is whether we believe Jesus is Lord. One with the Father, Creator God, Lord of all creation. If you don’t… stop playing around; be honest; and go over to the other side. If you do believe Jesus is God, has saved your soul, and will return again in Glory… act like it.

“I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.” These words of Jesus (Revelation 3:15,16) are what He will say when He returns.

Are you “standing here,” even “looking up to Heaven”?

He ascended. Now it is our turn, our time, to do His will on earth.

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Click: Hail the Day That Sees Him Rise

5-8-23

“Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent,” ran the opening line of a crime series in the early days of black-and-white TV. In the stories here, names are neither given nor relevant, but the situations are sadly too common in contemporary life.

They concern parents who are among my most precious friends; and precious children.

In the case of the first family, a family of strong Christian faith who show joy to the world about them and are upright in every way. One son had hidden demons, so to speak – episodes of emotional struggles and bouts of what the world calls mental health crises – and were that, indeed. Spiritual crises, too, but only episodes, because most of the time he was happy; a good friend and brother and son; strong in faith. But there were threats of suicide, and then prayer, therapy, meds, counseling. Then, evidently, victory. Then… suicide.

No more to be said, here anyway. Unimaginable grief, unending questions. Precious memories remain of the good times, of the good kid; for he was. Suicides are not new in humankind’s history… but why are they so common today? And among teens? And in a “comfortable” society, in happy homes?

In the other family, a son born with a proverbial silver spoon has periodically turned to drugs. The family is of conventional Christian background, and no social situation – other than the contemporary pattern of drug use so common – suggested that addiction was a prediction. Yet each episode was part of a vortex of more serious self-harm… then absences… and then bare escapes from disasters. Check-ins to programs and farms were accepted by the son every time… until he invariably checked out or went AWOL.

In this situation, currently, the parents are in a frenzy because the son has disappeared, evidently homeless and desperate, but by occasional accounts more addicted then ever.

In both of these cases, by some inner strength and faith, the moms neither gave up hope for their sons, nor faith in the One who can deliver… even amid the storms, even when the world screams, “Defeat!!!”

At this moment in history, in this rotting structure of a once-solid Christian society, I could be writing about other families, other children, other parents’ grief. Don’t we all know friends, relatives, neighbors with similar situations? Or… our own households?

The world grows crazier by the day.

And the world’s answer to the challenges of children who doubt is… to add more doubt.

The world’s answer to fear is… to provide more fear, to focus children’s attention on hopelessness and futility.

The world’s answer to craziness is to introduce more craziness: lies about gender, about patriotism, about tradition, about loyalty, about life, about faith.

Many of peoples’ problems in life are caused by their own sins. But many of today’s problems, I believe like those mentioned here, are the result of society’s evils visited upon vulnerable children – lies we are told; lies they believe; lies dressed up as truth.

Mental illness is real. Addiction is real. Does society – the “system” – provide help? Often, no. The culture, too often, is the enabler-in-chief. Music, entertainment, the media, Hollywood, education, even the church, too often provide excuses instead of solutions.

Are there solutions? If you believe the ills we face are bedrock spiritual crises… then, logically, the solutions are spiritual.

Shakespeare paraphrased Deuteronomy 32:2 when he wrote,

The quality of mercy is not strained.
It drops as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed:
It blesses those who give and those who take…
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings;
It is an attribute of God Himself.

… and I suggest that, as the quality of mercy is not “strained,” neither are the qualities of love, and anguish, and grief, and a parent’s heartache. Neither a child’s needs, whether recognized, acknowledged, or silently screamed.

Only with God’s help can we end these cycles of horrible choices and frightening situations. They are cycles, for these situations described here are not random. This is contemporary America. This is our Post-Christian society. This is the world.

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world – the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life – is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever (I John 2:15-17).

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This is a song written by the grandfather of my friend Daryl Coats about a “wayward” child and a parent’s love.

Click: The Greatest Gift

5-1-23

I am enamored of the hilarious BBC mockumentary series Philomena Cunk that has found its way onto American cable outlets and the internet. Comedian Diane Morgan plays a determined blockhead who conducts educational tours and interviews actual experts and professors about history, the arts, and culture.

She is relentlessly clueless, and manages to surprise and confuse her stuffy guests. Normal hosts begin their interviews with respectful introductions or a detailed resume of the person’s credentials, but Philomena routinely demands, “So, who are you?”

Don’t get whiplash, but I will pivot from her silliness to a legitimate thought: When we think about it – which we often should – life is always asking us, in effect, “Who are you?” To take stock, and to know where we’re going. We should ask it of ourselves, too. “The unexamined life,” Socrates said, possibly going overboard, “is not worth living.”

And then, of course, we must be aware that God is forever asking us, “Who are you?” – not waiting for Judgment Day. Who are you?

We evolve; and we should. It is the essence, after all, of the requirement to be “born again.”

Who are we? People different than we were yesterday. People whose tomorrows will be different than today. “Better”? That depends on the definition of “better,” and certainly it depends on choices we make, and our determination to draw closer to God.

The act of “drawing closer” was given a name in the early church and in church history: to be “Imitators of Christ.” It clearly means to walk in the footsteps of Jesus; to apply His teachings and His examples of love, forgiveness, humility, mercy, charity. To be Jesus to those who hurt or are lost. A few decades ago it was manifested in the WWJD wristbands – “What would Jesus do?”

The books of the Gospels and Epistles have numerous adjurations to be like Christ. St Augustine made a brilliant recommendation: Why art thou proud, O man? God for thee became low. Thou wouldst perhaps be ashamed to imitate a lowly man; then at least imitate the lowly God. St Francis; St Bernard of Clairvaux; St Thomas Aquinas, all sought ways to be Christ-followers best by “imitating” His ways, not only believing in Him.

The Imitation of Christ is a book by Thomas à Kempis written in 1418. It can be seen as Christendom’s first devotional manual. With Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress it probably is the most-printed book in the Western world, after the Bible itself. It still is a worthwhile “user’s manual,” so to speak, for being a Christian. It is not a 12-Step program or substitute for Salvation. It helps us be like Christ, subsequent to Salvation. Find it! Many translations and versions exist.

You will discover, when you ask “Who am I?” and determine to “imitate” Christ in every way, that you have great company! Imitation, that is, as a theological practice. We could do worse. The Bible overflows with examples of people who examined their lives… asked “Who am I, really?”… and then were changed. Discover “Before and After” examples of people who can inspire us.

David slew a giant (anthropologists, by the way, have discovered that there were races of giants) but was also the “sweet singer of Israel.” He could be such a rotten schemer that he arranged to have his lover’s husband killed… yet he ultimately was, after forgiveness, the king “anointed of God.”

Was there ever a better example of “Before and After” than Peter? An impulsive fool, sometimes, and one who denied Jesus three times… but after Pentecost he matured and became what Jesus promised, the leader of the Church.

Saul persecuted believers, even having some put to death. After his own “Who am I?” experience, he became Paul, the first and greatest evangelist; writer of half of the New Testament.

The examples are many. We think of Luther, we think of C S Lewis, we think of Billy Graham. We think of so many saints of history who found new lives by examining their old lives… and were transformed from the Old Selves to New Creations in Christ. Imitation may be the best form of theology!

Who are you?

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Click: Who Am I?

4-24-23

This weekend marks an anniversary in my family. Usually that word “anniversary” connotes a happy date but in this case it was associated with much sadness. My niece Liza died on an April 22^nd, after a difficult birth, a severe case of cerebral palsy, an eventual three-month mental maturity level, a prognosis of perhaps three years of life but ultimately well more than two decades of these conditions. Her sweet smiles masked the tragedy of her daily life.

My sister Barbara was a single mom who battled this situation bravely and lovingly. After some years, at a certain point she stumbled and sustained her own individual health problems and myriad other challenges, some virtually nightmarish. Many people might have thought her situation could not possibly have been worse. And then Liza died.

Recalling all this on the phone this week, Barbara, still facing challenges, spoke with perfect peace. So many past memories have been replaced, she said, by the joy and hope – no: the knowledge – that one day she will be with Liza in Glory. And they both will be whole. And that now, she knows, Liza is in the arms of my late wife Nancy, also the victim of many ailments in her own painful journey on earth. What a reunion that will be!

It can be an empty phrase, or a cruel joke, to say that we can choose joy despite life’s pitfalls. On the other hand, many people who know the truths of God’s promises nevertheless choose despair and depression and sorrow. Excuse me, but those choices are empty, cruel, and joyless.

Among the choices that my sister Barbara made along the way, and that made all the difference, was to accept Jesus. I quickly say that “accepting Jesus” is another phrase that we frequently hear, or say, but it has many deeper shades of meaning. Something so profound cannot be reduced to a phrase, and if you are a Christian who deals honestly with your faith walk (or even if you are not) you know how many steps there have been, and will be, on that “walk.”

Even a lightning-bolt conversion, the “road to Damascus” experience, is never the whole story. We all have progressive revelation… we see through glasses darkly, then with increasing clarity… we experience doubts… we learn lessons… we rebel and return… we hunger for the Word… we grow bold… we receive spiritual chastisement… we feel the peace that passes understanding… we “know that we know that we know”…

Sometimes these experiences are stretched out over years. Sometimes they can all seem to come in one day of spiritual yearning! And everything in between. Faith is a living thing, growing; almost breathing. In fact, the Holy Spirit does breathe into us the profound truths of God – literally in-spiration.

So Barbara cannot really be described as suddenly “accepting Jesus.” As her brother who prayed for her and with her, it has seemed to me more like she gradually realized Jesus had been there with her all the time. And then the realization that Jesus had accepted her, not just the other way around.

Then that “walk” didn’t seem so lonely anymore.

In all these ways a miracle can take place – for it is miraculous that amid horrible conditions and seemingly hopeless situations such as this mother and daughter experienced… joy and peace can come out of it. The world cannot give that, and the world cannot take it away.

And the devil cannot take away an anniversary that, somehow, is a Happy Anniversary after all.

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Click: What a Meeting In the Air

4-17-23

I cannot be surprised or critical or… anything other than empathetic when I meet Christians who are sincere, maybe lifelong churchgoers, even those who are secure and comfortable in their faith – but don’t know some of the bedrock truths of the Gospel.

I don’t mean knowing the “rules.” Or being familiar with the traditions. Nor creeds and hymns. I mean knowing Christ, that last and important step. I recently read a brilliant squib reminding us that all one of the thieves on the cross did was to acknowledge Jesus… who then told him, “Today you will be with Me in Paradise.”

And I cannot be critical of those who have “missed” important truths, in spite of knowing rules and rituals… because I was there too.

I have been in those “places,” and, thank God, still got through some crises of faith, and weathered some of them, but not all. Or not all well. Here are some things all believers should know up-front.

1. For instance, after years of being a Sunday-school boy and regular church member, even on committees, I was thunderstruck when I finally realized we can know now whether we will spend Eternity in Heaven, or not. No waiting to step up to St Peter at the Pearly Gates.

In fact, Peter cannot pull rank on us, much less issue passes, in Heaven, nor will he want to. Just as “all have fallen short of God’s glory” here on earth, all the saints will be equal in Glory. “Saints” includes us. Further, think of the title that R W Schambach used to use, which still blesses me – “our elder brother Jesus”! Think about it!

2. I don’t have to pray over and over (“without ceasing”) to be forgiven for this-or-that. When we are truly repentant, God forgives. And forgets (which is more than we are usually able to do! What a feeling of liberation)! Is there something God cannot do? — Yes, He tells us He cannot remember our forgiven sins and hold them against us!

3. We should lose the well intentioned attitude, seemingly humble, of many Christians – especially new or “baby” Christians – to pray with the attitude of “I am a miserable sinner, how can I approach You, I am not worthy…” etc., etc. No! When we have Jesus in our hearts, God sees the Jesus in us, not the “old” us anymore. Jesus died for us so when God looks at us, we are “covered in the blood” – He sees that, and not our flawed, finite, former, selves. This is an amazing fact that few believers realize or exercise. And is why the Bible says we can – we should – boldly approach the Throne of Grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need (Hebrews 4:16).

(Now. About prayer and forgiveness and the “burdens of our heart,” it is, still, a mystery. Yes, God casts our sins into “the sea of forgetfulness.” Yes, when we are saved, all is washed away, “all things are made new.” Yes, He has the power to know the future; He knows all. But… there are mysteries. The Bible says we should “pray believing”… so can we always say, “Done!” Or, do repeated prayers suggest our occasional lack of faith? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Through such mysteries we are led, when we rely on the Holy Spirit’s guiding. When the Bible encourages us at times to pray without ceasing, in our strong faith we will want to, and we do. The born-again believer knows when God wants to minister to our spirits… and prayer becomes a conversation, not a list of requests.)

This is one reason Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit, “who will lift our prayers to the high places… who prays for us in the Heavenlies and before the Throne… and [I love this] when we cannot find the words, will groan for us before God, on our behalf.” It is why I cherish the Pentecostal mode of the Early Church: we can access the Gifts of the communication with the Lord, the prayer-language of angels. The Spirit will approach God for us with groanings we cannot express; but God knows… and will be touched.

I grieve that some Christians do not know the full Gospel, do not avail themselves of the peace – and the power – that God has laid before us. As tools, sometimes. As weapons, frequently. As aids, all the time.

Does religion lie to us? Yes, it has lied; it has confused the Truth; it has obscured and hidden truths. Read your Bible. God does not lie; He cannot lie. It is not about religions; it is about Jesus. If you are on a figurative cross of sin, or doubt, of hurting – or even exercise smugness – turn to the Savior on His cross. He will invite you too to Paradise.

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Click: How Firm a Foundation, originally written in 1787.

Easter 2023, 4-10-23 message

There are many ways to think about Easter – including, I earnestly mean, ways for us to contemplate and meditate upon its significance.

Beyond its secular trappings and pagan associations, the eggs and candy and (once upon a time) Easter parades, and hunting for eggs. The bunnies. The “traditional” Easter menus.

Even, at our churches, the end of Lent with, for some Christians, its ashes and sacrifices, palms on Sunday and Good Friday observances. Even sunrise services and special hymns. Beyond all that…

I once had a Christian friend who was a faithful, lifelong churchgoer. An orthodox (but not Orthodox) Protestant. But to the extent he had a personal theology, he had some gripes with God. For instance, he always wondered how God could be a “God of love” who required that Abraham kill his boy Isaac as a sacrifice. Do you know the story? Neither did Abraham understand, but he obeyed. He took Isaac up on a mountainside and prepared to slay him. As we know, God intervened and told Abraham to let up.

The whole act seemed to my friend to be unbelievably cruel – from the strange command to the “tease” of calling off the bizarre command at the last minute. “God of Vengeance I understand,” my friend said about the “Old Testament” revelations of God; “Even a God of Judgment. But to torture a father in such a way, and to even present a scenario of preparing the boy to be killed… what kind of a God is that?”

Well, He is a God who evidently was not introduced to congragations over a lifetime of Sunday sermons. For between the lines of the Abraham-and-Isaac story is a God of love.

We can, perhaps, forgive my friend. Because despite the ancient Israelites always looking to the “coming Messiah” and receiving myriad signs and prophesies, very few of them understood the ways of the Lord. For that matter, even the Disciples who lived with Jesus for three and a half years, who witnessed miracles and listened to teachings, did not fully understand the message of the cross. Right down to the arrest and passion of Jesus; his crucifixion and death – even immediately upon His miraculous resurrection from the tomb – they did not fully understand what we are considering here: the meaning of Easter.

Jesus was God-Become-Man, the Incarnation. Not in order to live as much as to die.

His mission was only peripherally, however important, to teach and heal and bear witness to the Father. His mission was to be killed.

As the Christ he touched people’s lives as they happened to meet Him. But it was never meant to be that His life on earth would “draw all unto Me.” That was the purpose of His death, not His life – “If I be lifted up.”

The message of the cross and the meaning of Easter were in the sacrificial death of the spotless lamb, Jesus Christ. Unlike the sinless Jesus, all of humanity has sinned. And no one can stand sinless before a Holy God, “no, not one.” Rules, commandments, religious laws had not brought salvation to humankind. How many times a year (or a week, or a day) do you commit any sort of sin?

Jesus became that sin offering; His death is substitutionary. “Believe in Me,” Jesus told us, “and ye shall never die.” That is – life eternal, forgiveness of those sins, acceptance by God. We only have to believe it in our hearts, and confess it with our mouths.

After Jesus died for the punishment we deserve, He rose from the dead to show that, indeed, sin and death have been defeated on our behalf. Then He, 40 days later, ascended bodily into Heaven, to finally confirm His divinity. Then the Holy Spirit came to believers – as it does today – on the day of Pentecost, to be God-within-us.

It sounds simple. Maybe even crazy, but no crazier than Abraham being asked to sacrifice his son. It was picture, a foretelling, a prophesy, of the Lord God’s willingness to sacrifice His own Son. Indeed, it stood as His promise to do so.

“Life” was, perhaps, viewed a little differently in Old Testament days; infant mortality was common. And in today’s world (ironically, especially in “Christian” countries) life seems cheaper all the time, as our culture of death normalizes abortion and euthanasia, trafficking and abuse. Yet the slaying of one’s child, directly, or planning it, as God ordered the Passion of the Christ… is a different matter.

If God the Father ever wept, it was then.

And the meaning of Easter is not only Jesus’s death, but all He endured – for us. The unjust arrest, the false accusations, the mocking, the whipping, the physical abuse, the crown of thorns, the carrying of the rough cross through streets, the spikes through wrists and feet, hanging, bleeding, suffocating. And, in my imagination, the most painful aspect might have been the Savior’s realization of betrayal by His closest friends and followers.

“What kind of God,” as my friend might have asked, “would write such a script?”

The answer is the Easter message: A God who loves us to such an extent.

That Easter message, ultimately, is a love story. Nothing more; and surely nothing less. The hymns we sing are love songs back to God. The unified story of the entire Bible, its centrality the hours between the cross and the empty tomb, was God’s plan for His incarnate Son. And for us.

But it’s not over. Jesus does not “merely” live today. There is a lesson of a little boy playing Jesus in a Sunday School Easter pageant, in his bedroom robe, jumping from the cardboard tomb and yelling “Here I come, ready or not!!!”

In fact, that is close to what Jesus says. It’s our turn now. “What kind of God” has been answered. Now the question is – What kind of people will respond?

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Click: Were You There?

4-3-23

This time of year we focus once again on Palm Sunday, Holy Week, Good Friday, Easter, the Resurrection, the Ascension. In fact we should meditate on these events – and the truths behind them – more often than once a year. What was a miracle on the morning called Easter is a miracle to cherish in summer, fall, and winter too, and every day of our lives.

In the same manner also I have learned to look “beyond the familiar,” regarding the events of this season, and all events recorded in the Bible, all passages that speak to us. To know contexts is to enrich the truths.

For instance, the story of Blind Man Bartimaeus has always been compelling to me. The setting is just before Holy Week as we call it; just before Jesus entered Jerusalem. We know from the Palm Sunday story that His reputation preceded Jesus. Multitudes of people thronged about Him – happy mobs, really. They knew of His miracles, heard about His teaching; shared in the popular adulation. We read of His entrance to Jerusalem, the crowds, the palms laid in His path, the Hosannas. (We know too how the mob turned, as mobs often do; that is for another time.)

On His way to Jerusalem Jesus passed through the city of Jericho. We know a little bit about Jericho – a city of sin and resistance where “Joshua fought the battle” and destroyed the walls; where, also and perhaps significantly, Jesus named it in the parable of the Good Samaritan. Three Gospels describe the “celebrity tour” (if we can picture it in today’s mode) of Jesus, His entourage of Disciples, and the cheering crowds, as they headed for Jerusalem.

In the midst of this hubbub, a lonely street beggar, blind and poor, became aware that Jesus approached; the Miracle-Maker from Galilee. Here I have always wanted to “go beyond.” There is so much to “unpack” in this seemingly simple story of one more of Jesus’s miracles.

Join me in the various examples of symbolism. “The rest of the story” as Bartimaeus was made to see, his eyes healed.

We can meditate on the significance: Physical blindness being a “type” of spiritual blindness. Even the Disciples, knowing Scripture and prophesies and hearing Jesus’ own references to His imminent fate, were themselves blind to the reality of what was about to happen… and its spiritual importance. Yes, we all need our eyes opened.

We can realize that what Jesus heard was not the poor beggar’s cries, but what Bartimaeus called out: not Jesus’s name, but His title: Son of David. This was (and not from the mouth of a temple scholar) the Scriptural identification of the coming Messiah. This was not Ancestry.com trivia, but an acknowledgment that this Jesus, passing by, was indeed the Son of God incarnate. Yes, we all need to acknowledge the Savior.

In some translations, the cry of Bartimaeus is “Have pity on me!” but in the original Greek it reads, “Have mercy on me!” (Thus Kyrie Eleison, “Have mercy on us,” in traditional liturgies.) Of course, both pleas are appropriate. The cry for mercy, however, speaks as much to the longing of his soul – for forgiveness – as for pity, concern for his physical state. Yes, we all have serious spiritual needs, no matter the condition of our health or comfort in life.

To me, an important lesson has been the nature of the Disciples’ efforts, as we read, to make Bartimaeus shut up. I can almost imagine them saying, “Who are YOU? This is the Master wanting to move on! (Implying, ‘WE are important too!’) Stop yelling out! We are trying to keep this parade organized…” But Jesus had other priorities, and other ideas about order and dignity. Yes, we all need to respond to Jesus Christ as He would have us do… not as people around us – or even people around Him – do!

In contemporary context, I will recall my own experiences. Growing up in churches where prayers – even “Hallelujahs” and “Hosannas” – were sleepily mumbled by writ, with no hints or feelings of joy. Many churches discourage “amens” and raised hands from the congregation when Good News is shared. At the seeming other extreme, some churches order joy and dancing, but likewise discourage weeping in conviction, or expressing needs for forgiveness

“Shut up, blind man! We’re having CHURCH here!”

Thank God, Jesus heard Blind Man Bartimaeus. And He stopped. And He healed. May we all call out to Jesus, laugh with Jesus, cry unto Jesus. Praise Him in whatever circumstance, and wherever you are. He is always ready to call out to us, laugh with us, and cry with us.

Jesus will even stop parades to be there for us.

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That was a meditation on what happened just before Palm Sunday and Holy Week. Here is a song about what might have happened just before Easter itself:

Click: The Night Before Easter

1-16-23

There is an old description of untruths or falsehoods – “Lies, damned lies, and statistics.” It is, of course, more of an accusation against statisticians than everyday, garden-variety liars; and my own assessments of that profession is: “Statistics don’t lie, but statisticians do.”

We see this proven most glaringly in politics and public-opinion polling, but it is everywhere, in every sphere, used at every possible opportunity. I will assert that 78 percent of people agree with me.

Having disposed of that, we are left with lies, a subject or at least a practice with which most of us are familiar. But I rather mean for us to think about “damned” lies, and I hope nobody is offended by the word, but it is chosen and should be considered carefully.

To employ the “D” word, as earlier generations liked to politely clothe it, involves one of the most serious matters, with the most serious consequences, of all things. There is a heaven and there is a hell, even if contemporary society denies the existence of both. Even modern – or I should say post-modern – churches tend to deny hell; at the least we can note that many denominations avoid the subject of hell; many churches ignore the consequences of hell; many preachers deny the existence of hell.

And when the Bible, when Jesus Himself, spoke of hell and its reality, the contemporary world in its denials, finds it easy, or in fact, logically incumbent, to dismiss heaven – the desire for heaven, the reality of heaven, the existence of heaven. Besides, contemporary life and paternalistic governments bring us heaven on earth, right? So what’s the need?

When people, much less denominations, say that they know more than the Bible, and better than Jesus, their “faith” is no faith at all.

But damnation is real. It is a severe caution, and it is a literal threat. To state the previous point another way, if there is no hell and no damnation, God had no reason to become incarnate, to have Jesus come to earth, suffer, and die. If there is no hell to be saved from, there is no heaven to hope for, and then God Almighty is flawed, and His Son Jesus was a fool – worse, a liar.

There’s that word – Liar. God cannot lie. It is not in His nature. But one of the Bible’s several names of Satan is “Liar.” Further, his job description, pictured most fully in the Book of Job but elsewhere too, is “Accuser.” We can say it is his job description.

Whether literally true – I believe it is true, but I mean whether every minute or daily or in a physical setting – we are not told and I do not care about such details. God knows all, but nevertheless it is written that Satan accuses the saints (us). As I said, God knows everything anyway, so there must be a point to our being reminded in the Word that our sins are seen in unseen places, known to God and the heavenly host and even the devil… perhaps as Satan’s final effort (his job description again, according to the Scripture) to “steal, kill, and destroy.”

Jesus told us, “If you believe in God, believe also in Me.” So as night follows day, what God said and Jesus taught about heaven and hell should keep us aware. Hell and damnation are not things casually to dismiss, and certainly not things to talk about lightly. “Damn this,” and “damned that,” and “Go to hell!” — when we say such things, we are playing with fire.

There is one more thought about lies, and the devil accusing us before the throne of God. Whether literal or Scripture’s way of helping us picture reality is not as important as this truth:

If Satan is a liar, I don’t care so much about him accusing us, lying about us, to God.

What we should be concerned about – tremble with fear, actually – is that the devil would tell the truth about us.

Why? If we are sinners, we have already condemned ourselves. If we have accepted Jesus, however, our robes are clean.

We must not be concerned with what the devil claims, but Whom our hearts have claimed.

And that’s no lie.

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Satan, the enemy of our souls, roams about and among us seeking whom to devour, as the Bible says. He might rant and roar against us before God… yet let us remember that softly and tenderly Jesus is calling.

Click: Softly and Tenderly

1-9-23

You probably have heard this acronym, a good prescription for getting through life and advising others. The fact that we seldom observe it does not diminish its wisdom.

Events in the news this week will live on, and on, as yet another political football: the election of a new Speaker of the House of Representatives. Reactions in chat rooms, on cable news and, because I frequently write (and draw editorial cartoons) about politics, outreach from friends who vented, asked questions of me, and unpacked angry comments of their own. There has been widespread frustration with the machinations on Capitol Hill.

It was confusing; it was messy; it was of interminable length. Rivalries were exposed; partisan divisions were highlighted; ambitions were on display. Why could not a simple winner-take-all vote prevail? Why the florid speeches and name-by-name roll calls? Why the horse trading and pledges?

… the answer to all this is: That’s the way it is supposed to work. The Framers of the Constitution (as in so many other ways, thank God) knew what they were doing. Such arrangements in the House of Representatives – designed differently than the Senate – is the closest the American government gets to democracy… which is in its purest forms, by the way, a system the Framers despised and distrusted. They designed a Federal Republic, at most a modified republican democracy.

They did not want to “keep it simple” in this case. Virtually automatic accession of leaders – which recently has prevailed in the House’s power-structure – were envisioned as exceptions, not routine. Changing rules… challenges to those in authority… factions… the input of lobbies (how that has been perverted!)… compromises… frequent elections (two-year terms instead of the Senate’s six)… apportioned seats on committees… and, yes, “deals”… were all meant to keep the House close to the pulse of the public. NOT simple; just the opposite.

So. We saw this week what is called “sausage-making”: when politics seemingly gets messy. Folks like me (and I believe the shades of the Framers) loved the aroma of a country breakfast – “sausage making” in the House’s Speaker contest. A great show. And was the House’s “business” on hold for four whole days? Folks like me sometime wish that parts of government could be on gridlock for four months.

Anyway, I regret that so many people are ignorant of our government’s structure – its original architectural design, really – and were further seduced by Svengalis of the media. (For instance, instead of “simply” and properly reporting events, TV hosts colored the process. The 20-or-so holdouts were characterized as insurgents, egoists, and even terrorists; but I think if they had been liberals they would have been called Profiles in Courage and brave souls with integrity…) A lone congressman traditionally was allowed to challenge a leader’s status, until a Pelosi-decade ago; but its restoration is likened to a lynch mob’s fervor. Horrors! Chaos!! A raucous caucus!!!

The holdouts were upset with decades of broken promises about balanced budgets, transparent writing of laws, term limits, earmarks, “regular order” (through committees instead of puppet-strings of the handful of leaders). Upset that 5,000-page bills are devised in secret and presented for voting immediately upon arrival. Upset that too many laws are written, really, by donors and lobbyists. Left-or-right IDs aside, elaborate complaints ought to have outlets for pushing back.

So, some things are not supposed to be simple. But – Spoiler alert: I will share how “Keep it simple, stupid” does pertain to one of life’s more important matters.

Throughout humanity’s history this matter invariably has been distorted to seem complicated. It has been festooned with uncountable conditions. The matter has been subject to additions and subtractions. Innocent people have been deluded by rules and exceptions and mumbo-jumbo and, too often, have been intimidated.

That matter is Salvation.

Religion – that is: humankind’s systems of translating and explaining and operating what should be the simple province of your soul and your God – has sent more people to hell than have demons. Religion is, at best, reaching up to Heaven. Christianity simply is God reaching down to humankind.

God did not want it to be anything but Simple: He sent His Son to be the substitution for the punishment we deserve as sinners. Simple.

Jesus did not add to laws and commandments and rules: Rather, He fulfilled the Law. Simple.

The Holy Spirit was sent to be God’s method of guiding believers – to comfort, inspire, and direct us. Simple.

The Gospel, explained many ways and many times, is the opposite of complicated:

God created us with free will. But as humans, we choose to sin and offend Him.

A just God, being Holy, cannot have those whom He loves continue our sinful ways, or approach the Throne and live in Heaven, unless sinless.

This Holy God provides a loving means for us to be forgiven, and to be reconciled with Him.

He sent His Son to take our sins upon Himself.

All that is required is that we accept in our hearts that Jesus is the Son of God; that we confess with our mouths that He died to be our Savior; and believe that God raised Him from the dead.

That’s all? That’s all.

Keep.

It.

Simple.

That’s not stupid.

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Click: God On the Mountain

1-2-23

New Years is a sort of anti-Lent. We resolve to do things as New Year resolutions; and many people vow to give things up for Lent. There is a similarity, however: very few of us carry through on either category of intentions. The more interesting survey would be to track the average number of days people “keep” such pledges.

I have a new idea for New Years resolutions.

It involves neither self-sacrifice nor a “self-help” box to check, although you will feel good for having done it. But you will make others feel better – a pretty good way to start the year. Of course it does not have to be on the first of the year… but many of us need some “hook” to hang our good intentions on. (I think that is the justification for a lot of holidays on the calendar.)

There is not one among us who does not know, or know of, an “angel.” Not a literal, sent-from-Heaven angel (maybe), but friends who do good deeds. People who reach out to folks in need, even in mere moments of loneliness. They encourage. They involve themselves in local causes, perhaps with no fanfare. They sacrifice or volunteer. They smile when smiles are hard to come by; they weep with you when nobody else understands.

Praise God, every family, every neighborhood, has these people. Sometimes they never know how they are appreciated, because they go through life without being thanked… but they do not bless others in order to garner praise.

I suggest bringing a few of those people you know – because surely you do – to mind. One of them; three of them; whatever. And let them know they are appreciated, sincerely. Arrange to see them… write an anonymous thank-you note… send a non-anonymous, personal, thank-you note or e-mail… express your appreciation over coffee… whatever.

The form is not as important as the will to do it; and the will is not as important as the deed. I will name three or four such people I know. I will decline to use their names here, although that would honor them. But angels like this do not operate for glory or honor, and I want to inspire similar outreaches among you.

One friend has been a teacher in Texas, also is an author, a church worker, a selfless volunteer at conferences. She has managed difficult family situations, and may never get over the loss of her husband to cancer. She is chiefly, however, an encourager of others. She has blessed uncountable other people, not the least with her famous sense of humor; but some of us know she cries as many tears as she causes smiles. In all, an angel – a saint – and the type of friend who deserves the type of note I suggest for a New Year resolution.

No less spiritual, but active in other realms important to Christians these days, is a friend whose faith motivated her to be active in local, then state, politics. School curricula, mask and vaccine mandates, governmental intrusion, moved her to attend school board and legislative hearings. Often stonewalled, she climbed the ladder of activism, only to be frustrated further. Even at her state capital, deliberate snubs. She and other “moms” banded together and ran for offices. She challenged her state’s senate majority leader. She lost but, again, was frustrated when she requested to see vote totals. Time, trouble, and expenses racked up. She and her fellow moms – Christian Patriots all – are now primed for future crusades. Our whole nation should be filled with selfless angels like her. Her children are out of school, but she battles for the Kingdom.

I have another friend who similarly believes that Christians must be active in the public sphere – that we are seeing the heritage of our faith slip away. He had been brand-manager for a well-known international fashion company, jet-setting around the world doing consequential work. He gave it up, returned to his family’s fifth-generation home in rural Michigan… and still is a jet-setter of sorts, but now he attends conferences, speaks at events, organizes large meetings. His two spheres, now, are Christianity and the political crisis we face. As the previous angel is doing, my friend does not merely complain or advocate; he has rolled up his sleeves as a poll-watcher and attends meetings from the local to the highest levels. And his greatest joy – I have seen this over and over – is sharing Christ, witnessing to others. Baristas, handymen in town, celebrities he knows. It is what angels do.

Another friend is an angel in work overalls. He was an assembly-line worker who was obliged to retire when he developed a disease that made it unsafe to continue on his shifts. In his wonderful family he has a wife and two beautiful daughters who have debilitating, degenerative afflictions. I have never heard any of them complain or display anything but smiles and good cheer, goodwill. My friend uses his skills to manufacture or retrofit lifts for people’s vans, or stair lifts for their homes… and many of these folks are virtual strangers to him. Angels come in all forms.

In situations like these I have described, the “angels among us” do not have to be old friends from their address books… but are, after all, the best friends many folks could want.

Or need.

You surely know some Angels Among Us. Bless them with a warm reminder that you know about, and appreciate, their ministrations.

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Click: Someone is Praying For You

12-19-22

Do we realize that the birth pangs of the first Christmas were not Mary’s alone?

The Bible tells us that all the aspects of Christ’s Birth were not unalloyed joy. The birth pangs of Mary were prophesied in Scripture, even from the Garden, and birth pangs are frequent Biblical metaphors for the distress believers will endure, even persecution unto the End Times.

Specifically at Christmastide the reference is not solely to one mother’s labor.

There was the grief of Judean mothers. It is ironic, especially in our secular time when the Divinity of Jesus is questioned – even in the pulpits of “liberal” churches – yet the pagan Roman ruler Herod acknowledged the mysterious, incarnate Savior to the extent that he ordered the slaughter of little boys under the age of two when he was told of prophecies.

This is no surprise when we remember that the devil himself acknowledged Jesus as the Christ, Son of the Living God. Herod was an amateur when we consider other enemies of Christianity; and the devil ultimately will be defeated (was defeated at the Resurrection). Yet birth pangs, too often, enflame the faithful, from tearful mothers of those baby boys, to mighty saints and martyrs.

Please, at least for a moment, put aside the Hallmark cards and boughs of holly. It is important to remember that He came… why He came… and how He came. In fact, Jesus was born amid tears; He dealt with tears; and He died on the cross – which was His mission – amid tears. Even 700 years before His Birth, Jesus was identified as a Man of Sorrows.

He shall grow up… as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and by his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned each of us to our own ways; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and he opened not his mouth…(Isaiah 53)

What has come to be called the Massacre or the Slaughter of Innocents today, as a historical fact, is described in Matthew 2:16-18. It has become a symbol, too – a twisted, evil inspiration to uncountable people around the world who slaughter innocents today. The abortion nightmare is not waged to thwart a Savior, but to save peoples’ comfort and convenience. I am in no way callous to the angst of these mothers when they make tortured decisions; believe me, I am specially tender, but we must always opt for life.

Some believe – or want to believe – that America marches lock-step with the contemporary world on this “issue.” But the US, with Communist China and North Korea, is virtually alone among nations in allowing the cruelest of procedures, and late-term deaths. Merry Christmas, by the way, to all survivors.

One of the most beautiful-sounding Christmas tunes is the lullaby we know as the Coventry Carol. Mother sings to child, “Bye, bye, lully lu-lay,” a transliteration of Old French. It is sweet, certainly; but many have forgotten that the mother in this lullaby is whispering good-bye to her son, about to be slaughtered. It is so named because this song, in Old English first called “Thow Littel Tyne Childe,” had its origins in a “Mystery Play” of Norman France and performed at the Coventry Cathedral in England. The play was called “The Mystery of the Shearmen and the Tailors,” based on the second chapter of Matthew. The earliest transcription extant is from 1534; the oldest example of its musical setting is from 1591.

How can it be that the grieving, almost insensate, lullabies of mothers, their dead babies in their laps or facing imminent slaughter, can reflect a matter of foundational faith? That is a question I cannot answer, either as a man or as a reflective Christian. Yet the Coventry Carol tells the story of this awful occurrence in a way that is achingly haunting and beautiful.

Many people – many mothers – superficially think the ancient carol with its Old French roots of English, “Bye, bye, lully, lullay…” is merely a bedtime song. Yet the lullaby (which word derives from the lament) is a reminder of the hideous opposition the world harbors against the Gospel; and it commemorates the price, sometimes, of being a Christian. For all its beauty, it is the lamentation of an innocent mother cradling her innocent slaughtered child in her lap: a horrible reflection of birth pangs.

Its plaintive melody is one of the great flowerings of polyphony over plainsong in Western music.

Lully, lullay, Thou little tiny child,
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.
Lullay, thou little tiny child,
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

O sisters too, how may we do,
For to preserve this day
This poor youngling for whom we do sing
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

Herod, the king, in his raging,
Charged he hath this day
His men of might, in his own sight,
All young children to slay.

That woe is me, poor child for Thee!
And ever mourn and sigh,
For thy parting neither say nor sing,
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

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Click Video Clip: Coventry Carol

12-12-22

This weekend I attended a performance of Messiah, the famous oratorio by Handel. Inspiring, always. Familiar, too. The musical miracle of Handel’s many great works, all three hours or so composed in about 23 days, invariably is heard this time of year, in concerts, on radio, even in snippets on TV commercials.

It is associated with Christmas but Handel intended, and lyricist Charles Jennens arranged Biblical passages, to tell the whole story of Christ, Emmanuel, God-with-us, the Incarnate Lord, Jesus. That is, not his “biography” but the dramatic glory-story from prophecies to the Millennial Kingdom.

I mention the words and concepts of the masterpiece because many people assume it is only Christmas music. As we shared here recently, the songs of salvation should never be filed away for one day or one holiday season – because that would mean they are neglected for the rest of the year. God forbid!

Handel, the “Greatest of English Composers” (1685-1759) was in a sense three different men: The German Georg-Fridrich Händel, born in the Saxon town of Halle; the popular composer of Italian operas Georgi Federico Handel; and the English George Frideric Handel. He settled in England, serving occasional patrons and arranging his own concerts. His string of operas (the fad of the entertainment world then) gave way to religious oratorios through the years. He became more and more religious as he grew older.

It is often misstated that he was brought to England by the Georges, kings of Hanoverian birth. But he did execute many works for them (they craved the association) and among his early works in England (1717) was a commission for King George I, the Royal Water Music. The Royal Fireworks Music is equally famous.

Händel was born in the same year as Johann Sebastian Bach, slightly more than 100 miles from Bach’s town of Eisenach; and attended Martin Luther University. Händel and Bach, the two masters of Baroque composition, were aware of each other, but never met. They were born only months apart, and Händel outlived Bach by nine years. Ironically, they both suffered from blindness at the end of their lives, coincidentally treated by the same eye surgeon. Tragically, the doctor was something of a quack.

Händel, once nearly bankrupt in England, was relatively wealthy by the end of his life. He was always generous with his resources. He had financed the new organ that had its first use in the debut of Messiah. Händel conducted that first performance, and annual concerts (in London) occurred every year until his death, all the proceeds going to his beloved charity, the Foundling Hospital.

Messiah was first performed in Dublin, in the New Music Hall. Significantly, two choirs were engaged: from St Patrick’s and from Christ Church (Trinity) – a symbolic bow to Catholic and Protestant “harmony.” Its initial presentation was over-subscribed; the crowds trying to enter resulted in SRO, and advance-ticket holders were turned away. Händel offered to conduct a second performance to satisfy the demand.

Among his many great works, Messiah was beloved of Händel. When he was close to death, his last prayer was that he lives until (and die upon) Good Friday – which would coincide with that year’s performance of Messiah. God granted this wish, by hours. The version we know today was enlarged in scope by Mozart; the oratorio has been touched by history’s greatest masters.

At this season, with such magnificent music, it is virtually impossible not to think of “other things” during the moments we pause to listen to the music… and the words. Oddly, the church where I attended a performance this weekend was in Flint, Michigan. “Oddly,” I say, because a news story was published on Friday that by some metrics or other, Flint was judged the worst city in America among almost 500 in the survey.

But in that beautiful church, hearing talented amateurs sing and play, proclaiming and believing the promises and reality of the Savior of humankind – unto us He was given – all the news and noise of the neighborhood and the world melted away.

The reality of a God who sent a Messiah to our world while we were yet sinners, must overcome the “reality” of this corrupt world.

And, for Christ’s sake (literally) do not pack away that truth in some box, to be forgotten the rest of the year.

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Click Video Clip (one short passage from Messiah, the prophecy of Isaiah, 600 years before Jesus’ birth): Unto Us a Child Is Born

12-5-22

An old friend of mine is Mike Atkinson, although he is not that old. But about 20 years ago we both worked at Youth Specialties, the youth-ministry resource outfit founded by Mike Yaconelli. It seems like Old Testament days ago, and our “Promised Land” was around San Diego.

I was a “Director of Product Development,” which meant editing several dozen books a year for youth pastors and yoots themselves. Mikey was lord of all web matters, computer stuff, and e-outreaches. I guess. Among YS’s activities was arranging three youth-worker conferences a year, each attracting 5-6000 registrants. Many superstars of Christian music gratefully received their first exposure at those conferences.

Since those glory days, I resumed my “work” as author, speaker, cartoonist, and… well, blogger. Mikey and his wife Stacy have been crowned Prince and Princess of Pacific-Coast Plumerias. That makes them petal-pushers, surveying the lei of the land in East County San Diego. He also continues to be an “it” guy (I think he means IT work) and hosts the daily web blast of humor and encouragement, “Mikey’s Funnies.” It is free, clean, and indeed funny – except when it is not. That is to say, occasionally he dispenses wisdom, and it usually is of the sort you tape to the refrigerator or share with your friends: the symptoms of good stuff.

This week he posted a list. I love lists, especially those that dispense advice or wise counsel. If I am feeling confident about life one day, I will try to remember all the items. If too many of them make me uncomfortable, I pretend to think that it is a multiple-choice quiz.

Since I began this blog a dozen years ago or so, I have listed Mickey’s Funnies on the list of recommended links on the home page. I hope you will visit some of them.

There is another touchstone I have with Mr Atkinson. He is a kidney-transplant recipient; as was my late wife, although she bested him by glomming a heart transplant too. God has blessed his health and the entire challenge he came through, since the experience. Mikey is also related by the marriage of one of his sons to a precious friend of mine. All that said, I would never describe him as a “sorry” individual. In fact he is just the opposite, which enabled him to share a list of ways for us not to be sorry as we wend our ways through life. Wend a willing ear to this:

You will never be sorry…

… for thinking before acting.

… for hearing before judging.

… for forgiving your enemies.

… for being candid and frank.

… for helping a fallen brother.

… for being honest in business.

… for thinking before speaking.

… for being loyal to your church.

… for standing by your principles.

… for closing your ears to gossip.

… for bridling a slanderous tongue.

… for harboring pure thoughts.

… for sympathizing with the afflicted.

… for being courteous and kind to all.

… Seriously.

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I recommend listening to this message’s song. It is a great arrangement from the Baptist’s Redback Hymnal. Neither Mikey nor I are Baptists, but those folks sure make some good music. We are not Catholic, either, but the singers are the Nunn Sisters. If they can’t decide whether they are Nuns or Sisters, it’s their business, but they sure sing purty anyway.

Click Video Clip: I’ve Never Been Sorry

The Happy Goodman Family was one of the great groups in Gospel music. Their talents, varied styles, and heartfelt messages through music – sermons in song, really – have touched uncountable people since the late 1940s. Brothers Howard, Rusty, and Sam, and Howard’s wife Vestal were icons; and Rusty’s daughter Tanya continues the tradition today.

Rusty was the group’s songwriter, and in fact some of his music has transcended Gospel shows and hit records, and found their way into many hymnals. But Howard, the front man for the family band, wrote one that summed up his life, the Goodman Family’s journey. And mine too.

Can you identify, at the end of the day in still, small moments, with the confessions and testimony Howard shared?

I don’t regret a mile I’ve traveled for the Lord,
I don’t regret the times I’ve trusted in His Word.
I’ve seen the years go by, many days without a song,
But I don’t regret a mile I’ve traveled for the Lord.

I’ve dreamed many a dream that’s never come true;
I’ve seen them vanish at dawn.
But enough of my dreams have come true
To make me keep dreaming on.

I’ve prayed many a prayer that seemed no answer would come,
Though I’d waited so patient and long;
But enough answers have come to my prayers
To make me keep praying on.

I’ve sown many a seed that’s fallen by the wayside
For the birds to feed upon.
But I’ve held enough golden sheaves in my hands
To make me keep sowing on.

I’ve trusted many a friend that’s failed me
And left me to weep alone.
But enough of my friends have been true-blue
To make me keep trusting on.

I’ve drained a cup of disappointment and pain,
And gone many a day without song.
But I’ve sipped enough nectar from the roses of life
To make me want to live on.

I don’t regret a mile I’ve traveled for the Lord,
I don’t regret the times I’ve trusted in His Word.
I’ve seen the years go by, many days without a song,
But I don’t regret a mile I’ve traveled for the Lord.

The italics here are mine.

I pray that they are yours, too.

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Click Video Clip: I Don’t Regret a Mile

9-12-22

Labor Day marked the end of Summer, no matter what our thermometers or gardens say. But we prepare in advance for the Fall things it conjures up by staging a rush on cable knit sweaters, wool jackets, and suede boots. We’re ready now for the ideals of the next season.

[A guest message from our friend Leah Morgan.]

It reminds me of the way a lady in her mid-fifties once introduced herself to me, “I’m old, fat, and ugly.” August’s ninety degree weather with its ninety-nine percent humidity hadn’t yet passed, but her words had her bundled up in scarf and gloves like February snow had avalanched her in.

I heard the message again today from another lady, “He’s too old to find another job. Who would hire him now at his age?”

What are they really telling me? Change is off-limits for anyone fifty and over? Settling for misery is delegated to a certain age bracket and becomes age-appropriate behavior? I’m not a participant in my health or life pursuits?

Should I book a double knee-replacement right away, find a good deal on a recliner, learn to watch more news, complain about the world, and strive for a sedentary existence? Is this an age-demographic persona we take pride in, while chiding the younger generation for not wanting to work?

We model the next generation into their current form more than we can lecture them into our ideals. Either our values are walked out, or they’re mere fantasies talked about.

I do a hard about-face. I reject these notions. This contrary outlook clarifies and solidifies my own convictions. The Maker of life does not grow bored with our days and turn His focus on a newer, shinier person to become engaged with, leaving us to putter aimlessly through a dull existence, shelved until death.

I step outside. My rose garden waves me over and dramatizes the truth.

Early June was its prime blooming window. Its strength and beauty shine brightest then. Yet, here we are, late in the season, on the brink of pumpkin-love with orange and brown on our minds, shades of pink so Yesterday. If roses were retail clothing, they’d be in the clearance section. They’re expired. Out of season. But we’ve had significant rainfall this summer. The consistent watering that roses really crave caused them to flourish beyond their stereotypical expectations. They’re outperforming themselves, growing at an unprecedented rate in an unlikely season.

They are still producing. Still beautiful.

Look how you’ve made all your devoted lovers to flourish like palm trees, each one growing in victory, standing with strength!

You’ve transplanted them into your heavenly courtyard, where they are thriving before you, for in your presence they will still overflow and be anointed.

Even in their old age they will stay fresh, bearing luscious fruit and abiding faithfully.

Listen to them! With pleasure they still proclaim: “You’re so good! You’re my beautiful strength! You’ve never made a mistake with me.”

(Psalm ‭92:12-15‬‬‬)

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Click Video Clip: Where the Roses Never Fade

9-5-22

An emotional week around here, capped by a funeral this morning. “We’ve gotta stop meeting like this” – I have attended too many lately, and occasionally I have been inspired to share thoughts, with your indulgence. They all are not “funereal” these days, as services do not have to be maudlin. When my family conducted a hospital ministry, we were introduced to joyous “home-going” services in Black churches; and they altered our various perspectives.

But today’s instance was about the hardest of all challenges to a family and friends, because 17-year-old Aaron – not his name, but it will be here – decided himself that it was time for his home-going. Permit me the euphemisms.

Hard enough, of course, but the act was more jarring because only hours earlier he was out with friends, laughing in diners, taking selfies. Only weeks before he decided to be baptized, and even presented his testimony of renewed faith in Christ and the joy it brings. Only months before he had “graduated” from a program that works with youth who experience episodes of depression, sometimes having attempted extreme measures to escape the anxieties they felt.

Yes, Aaron had for several years been in and out of ugly depression and occasional feelings of rejection, self-loathing, irrationality. The world saw the happy kid – intelligent, handsome, popular, and always (counter-intuitively?) faithful to Jesus. A daily Bible reader. Keeper of theologically introspective journals.

Questions. Of course there are questions.

Despite what our contemporary world insists we blithely believe, that “nothing matters anyway”… we need to ask questions, but there are no answers. Certainly not to everything; no Googling, no experts, not even – horrors, can I say it? – not even in the Bible. Listen: if we knew everything, we would be God. The Bible has answers for all that we need, but not every thing we want, or wonder about. And as soul-searing as some things are, even “sanctified” curiosity will remain mysteries until we gain Eternity.

That’s hard, but it’s true.

We ask, WHY?

And the world mockingly answers, Why not?

I think God answers, The important question is not Why, but What – in this instance, What did Aaron make of his life? What did he do in his life? What are the ways he touched people? What difference did he make?

The “why” questions involve a sort of permissible selfishness, as I recently discussed in this space. Of course we feel horrible for the soul who has “passed,” but the largest ingredient of Mourning is… mourning for ourselves. How we will miss our child, sibling, or friend. Mourning for the sudden hole in our lives. And that is OK.

But I had the thought during the service that every life means something. Every. Life. Modest people might think that’s true for others but not for them. No. That’s not life’s way. It’s not God’s way.

We all have meaning, we have effects. We can see this… or not. We can plan it… or not. It can be acknowledged… or not. Effects can live after us… No: they do live after us. Our lives matter; what we do matters. All of us, in little ways or big, actually want to make a difference.

So in that way, whether you live 17 years or 117 years, what you do matters. It matters to other people. It matters to God.

In that perspective, our friend Aaron packed a lot of “meaning” into 17 years. Impressing uncountable people with his good nature, adventurous spirit, and Christian activities. In a bizarre and seemingly cruel circumstance, it was precisely a year ago that his cousin and best friend, almost the same age to the day, was laid to rest after suddenly dying of a brain aneurysm; he also had packed an A+ personality and smarts and Bible study and social activity into a “brief” life.

I know it’s not a Bible verse, but we think of the phrase “Quality, not quantity” in the cases of young men like them.

In my own family’s hospital ministry mentioned above, the toughest questions we were asked by transplant-listed patients, families, or survivors was Why? Why me? Why my brother, why my son? I finally felt liberated – able better to minister in some small way – when one morning I answered, “I don’t know!!!”

The important and essential follow-up is, “Let’s pray about it. Let’s seek God.” Maybe we can cope a little bit better; maybe we can find peace; maybe there is healing indeed under the shadow of God’s wings (Psalm 36:7).

And maybe we can discern, and celebrate, and savor, the meaning of that person’s life… and as tough as it seems, choosing instead to look beyond only the length of his days.

If we can receive those blessings, we can start to make sense of things. And that’s a good road to travel when other paths lead to bitter tears and confusion and anger and resentment.

Life can be mean… but we must seek out the meaning. The seeking, itself, is a balm. And then we realize, as I asked above, that death can be a detail, but life is a fact.

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Video Click: Does Jesus Care?

8-22-22

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

My high-school English teacher, Mr Edward-Peter FitzSimmons, occasionally reminded us of people’s curious reliance on (ultimately futile) ancient wisdom, time-honored sayings, and fortune-cookie guidance.

He pointed out that virtually every wise word of advice had an equally wise (-sounding) opposite. Sort of like a rhetorical version of Newton’s Third Law of Physics.

“He who hesitates is lost” contradicts “Look before you leap.”

“Strike while the iron is hot” is challenged by “Better late than never.”

“If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” is confronted by “To thine own self be true.”

When all is said and done, a stitch in time saves nine. Um, I know that has an origin, but it is lost on me, just as many proverbs – and, today, internet memes – are lost on me. I think the most reliable proverbs are the ancient Proverbs written by King Solomon. The passage above was from his book of Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3: 1-8.

Those paired sentiments, the apposites of each line, separated by semi-colons, are not contradictory, as in Mr FitzSimmons’ examples. They remind us of the “both sides of life”; the unity of all the circumstances that God has charted for our journeys; the “turn, turn, turn” of the folk-song lyrics that were inspired by this passage.

We savor – or we should – every time of life, because every time has its unique blessings; youth, middle age, old age. When my three children were growing up and I was asked by someone how old he-or-she was, my stock answer was to cite the age and then say it was my favorite year for children. I’ll admit I was trying to sound a little Solomonic, if not solemnic; but I believed it, and do believe it.

At the recent funeral of a good friend who died in his 80s, there were many church friends and neighbors, and many of his family members who had moved to Texas through the years. Two who could not attend were on their honeymoon; recently married! The only factor making the scene more life-lesson symbolic would have been the birth of a grandchild on the day of the funeral.

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.

Much of the small-talk I overheard in the Fellowship lunch afterward centered on children, being the end of Summer – going back to school, leaving for college, even going into the military. These happy, exciting, or melancholy events also are locations on that wheel of life. “Seasons.”

I have written these weekly messages now for about a dozen years, and I seldom repeat messages or music videos, but this is one song I love to share every few years at this time. (As you go through life, you realize that a few things tend to repeat themselves: history; bad sauerkraut; and old bloggers).

I hope you will take a moment to watch the little video. It is a secular song about a mom “sending” her daughter off to college. I first heard it before my first daughter left for college almost 25 years ago; and it made me weep. Now… she graduated… my other children two subsequently went off to college… all have careers… and ol’ Pop has four grandchildren. I still weep because every Good-bye is never fully nullified by the occasional Hello.

Parents, of course, can never “regret” any empty-nest situation. It is a part of being a parent. “Seasons” – as the days drag on, the years speed by. Bittersweet, we say, sometimes forgetting the “sweet” part of such moments. If our tears seem bitter, we are reminded in Scripture that God provides a “balm in Gilead” — healing reminders of his sovereignty, His will for our lives, His love.

And His Seasons.

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Video Click: It’s Never Easy Letting Go

7-11-22

At times all believers wonder – no differently than do secular folk – Why do the “good” suffer? Indeed, why do sinners prosper? Where is God? Why is it necessary to go through trials at all? Why did my spouse die? How can I survive this economy? Can a blessing please come my way?

God answers prayer, yes; but why is the answer so often No? Why does God seem to delay His answers… or seem seldom to answer a specific pleading?

… Why does an all-powerful God, who loves us so much – and which we hardly doubt – where is He when we cry? Why must we suffer anguish? We feel we are not selfish, but why, God, are You so often late??? Have you cried out with such questions?

I have friends who have been in that place lately, and so have I. Our souls cry out, even as we know the truths, and we know His word: we don’t need Bible college to know that He is sovereign. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, as Hebrews Chapter 11 states. “Trust and Obey,” the old Gospel song assures us. There are hundreds of Bible promises. “Father knows best!” Even that has spiritual application!

But yet we hurt. And wait. And listen. And, sometimes, our spiritual shopping-list seems to have been ignored.

Among many clues to these questions in the Bible, I think today of Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha, and a special friend, we read, of Jesus. Lazarus was sick… Jesus was sent for to pray healing over him… Jesus was “late,” arriving four days after his friend died and was entombed. Why, why, cried the women and many other followers, Why were you late, Jesus?

Jesus wept (the shortest verse in Scripture), we are told. He prayed to His Father that His divinity might be manifest in that moment, to assert (once again) to witnesses that He was indeed sent by God. He instructed mourners that the stone over the tomb’s entrance be rolled away… despite protestations that there would be ugly putrefaction from a four-day-old dead body.

But Lazarus walked out. He was whole and healed.

Jesus directed that the remaining burial cloths be removed. The Lord was, we see, not the only example of a resurrection recorded in Scripture… and neither the last. (Many are to come!)

The lessons are many. First, regarding timely prayer requests: Was Jesus “four days late”… or was He, rather, precisely on time? I urge you to watch the short music video below, enacting the scene but sharing the Truth better than I am doing.

And we ought to practice humility. Our agenda is not God’s; our urgency is not His. My comment about a shopping-list is too often how we approach the Lord. That is not communication as God desires.

Also there is the point about God’s sovereignty. Jesus’ timing was perfect… but we need to learn that Jesus did not raise everybody from the dead. He might have healed everyone He met, but the Bible does not claim that. He loves us, but His ways are not our ways.

Do you begin to see the “problem” we sometimes have with prayer? The problems can be with our approach, not His hearing. The ultimate lesson is to have faith. “Be still and know that I am God,” He tells us.

I was persuaded, years ago, to have an all-in belief in Divine Healing, close to the “name it and claim it” theology we hear discussed. Then one day I realized that an evangelist I fervently followed… wore glasses. And his wife talked about sharing Jesus… during her physical therapy sessions. Hmmm.

My late wife underwent heart and kidney transplants despite praying that she be supernaturally healed instead. A year later she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, was “prayed over” but underwent surgery, after which the doctors “couldn’t explain it,” but there were no traces of cancer cells.

God is sovereign. Why do we always need reminders?

I take away one more lesson from Lazarus. He was from Bethany, but he is also a Metaphor, if you will forgive me. Lazarus was dead… and before Jesus shows up in our lives, we too are dead in our sins.

And others might pray for us… but only a personal encounter with the Savior will bless us.

Also: instead of thinking of yourself as a Mary or Martha or an onlooker… imagine yourself as Lazarus. He was not only dead by all the ways they could measure. But, remember Jesus ordered that the bandages and burial cloths be removed? Let us think about that: we often, and in many ways, are encumbered, and bound, by our sins. Burial cloths, in a way of thinking, restraining us.

Death accompanies such restraints – sins – on our lives. Jesus looses and frees us from them. And like Lazarus, we may be born again.

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Video Click: Four Days Late

7-4-22

When my children were young, my wife and I had them memorize our family’s address, in case they ever strayed from home or lost their way. To orient themselves or assist those who would help.

In these times, we would do well – all of us, adults as well as children – to memorize another Address ourselves. We have, in many and substantial cases, strayed from Home as a people. Our culture seems to have lost its way.

On the Fourth of July we observe a national birthday, commemorating the date affixed to the Declaration of Independence. With the Constitution and other founding documents, speeches, and sermons, it is testimony that the nation and the very “idea” of a Republic were endowed by our Creator.

Many Americans have grown cold or indifferent to those ideals, and we see examples of citizens taking their rights and blessings for granted At the other extreme, radicals denigrate those ideals and besmirch the Founders and Framers.

However, elsewhere in the world there remain lonely and courageous freedom-seekers who are inspired by those words. There are young and fragile governments who model their struggles on those words.

There should be American children and, yes, adults, too who commit to memory some of the ringing words of our heritage.

July Fourth is a unique day for several reasons. Among them, the Declaration was signed; it was when Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders secured San Juan Hill in a bloody battle; and it was the day (actually one of three days) that the consequential Battle of Gettysburg was fought.

There are some people today who reject the idealism of statesmen and soldiers of our past. They dismiss the sacrifices and hard-fought benefits of our difficult civic evolution. They reject the blessings of God; His working in a land when His guidance was sought; they deny God Himself.

Among other heresies, people claim that the conscience of a nation was not roused by the cancer of slavery; that other motives animated a civil war. But I have archives newspaper and magazines of the era, and it is striking how simple citizens – even newly arrived immigrants – affirmed and reaffirmed allegiance to a nation they could not abide splitting apart. And there was a burning determination to end slavery. As President Lincoln said, “If slavery is not wrong, then nothing is wrong,” and hundreds of thousands died so that bondsmen they did not know would be free.

When I was in grade school I chose to memorize Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. I am still moved when I recite it, or read it, or hear it spoken. It is only about 250 words long, and when Lincoln delivered it, the address followed a two-hour speech by that event’s “main” speaker. Witnesses say that the assembled crowd had barely settled, after stretching their bodies and routinely applauding, when it ended!

But its words – Lincoln’s message and meaning – were soon regarded as profound. It is now regarded as one of the great orations, great essays, of humankind.

I am afraid, to use Lincoln’s invitations, that if we cannot re-dedicate ourselves to what constitutes “this nation, under God,” we are lost as a people. The world might indeed little note nor long remember whatever it was we have done here in America.

We need to be reminded of our home addresses, so to speak, for we have lost our way.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

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Video Click: